


Local sad gremlin man falls in love with the personification of revolution and it goes about as well as can be expected. In fact it actually goes a lot worse.

by particolored_socks



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Literary References & Allusions, Meta Analysis, Meta Essay, Nonfiction, Originally Posted on Tumblr, So take that as you will, and that's including when i wrote my thesis on it in college, getting MAD at literary references & allusions, getting mad at victor hugo, line for line analysis of canon text, sorry e/R shippers i respect you but i don't ship that ship and this essay is basically why, this ... is pretty much the most i've ever delved into les mis, you will notice i did not tag this with the ship tag and that is for good reasons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-16 00:53:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16943928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/particolored_socks/pseuds/particolored_socks
Summary: Grantaire is in love with Enjolras,and Enjolras is just wondering what this gremlin man is doing hanging around the friends of the ABC so dang much,and this upsets me greatly but not because I want them to kiss:an essay.





	1. a group which barely missed becoming historic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> or: unhealthy coping mechanisms galore.

For part one we’re gonna break down Grantaire’s descriptive intro (going off Hapgood’s translation [here](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.online-literature.com%2Fvictor_hugo%2Fles_miserables%2F176%2F&t=OGMxYjdiZDJiY2JmMzBiOTlhMmQ4MzY4YTgyNTkzZWZmOWRkNzIyZCxtUUxuRzU2YQ%3D%3D&b=t%3A-xgIwv6rQKKJyyQisSqL5Q&p=http%3A%2F%2Fparticolored-arts.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F180961646195%2Fgrantaire-is-in-love-with-enjolras-and-enjolras-is&m=0)), versus his action intro (that’ll be part two).

We’re gonna do every sentence of this. Because just as he does with Fantine, with Javert, with every character, Hugo likes to pack as many punches possible into every single word.

> _Among all these glowing hearts and thoroughly convinced minds, there was one sceptic. How came he there? By juxtaposition._

Vicky, buddy. I need more information. “Juxtaposition” what? “Juxtaposition” who? This is not specific. This is thematic, sure. But it gives no inkling of how he fell in with the amis, or why.

> _This sceptic’s name was Grantaire, and he was in the habit of signing himself with this rebus: R._

We get his name, and we get a pun. My garbage son is a nerd. Grantaire -> grand r -> R ; but let’s go a little deeper here.

Grand r (capital r) is pronounced the same as grand erre. Which doesn’t make much sense grammatically speaking in French, so let’s just look at erre, the third person singular conjugation of the verb errer. Errer: “to wander,” “to roam.”

Errer is also one single vowel away from erreur: “error.”

Grantaire wanders, he roams, (he loafs) ; he makes mistakes. Perhaps he is a mistake. (We’ll get back to that later.)

> _Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe in anything._

This implies a certain level of effort. He takes care to avoid believing in anything in much the same way that Bossuet and Bahorel take care not to become lawyers.

Not for the same reasons – Bahorel in particular, [having been a veteran of Lallemand’s funeral](https://pilferingapples.tumblr.com/post/128478416976/les-mis-365-341-bahorel-1-the-funeral-the), views becoming a lawyer as becoming complicit in the oppression which lawyers and other bourgeois deal out. (This also puts Bossuet’s funeral oration for Blondeau in a very different light.)

So far, we aren’t given any reason why Grantaire is a skeptic. All we know is that he puts effort into being skeptical. But in the same way that Hugo forces us to make the connection between Lallemand’s funeral and Bahorel’s avoidance of lawyers by using only a sentence or two to describe it, so he treats Grantaire’s avoidance of belief.

> _Moreover, he was one of the students who had learned the most during their course at Paris; he knew that the best coffee was to be had at the Cafe Lemblin, and the best billiards at the Cafe Voltaire, that good cakes and lasses were to be found at the Ermitage, on the Boulevard du Maine, spatchcocked chickens at Mother Sauget’s, excellent matelotes at the Barriere de la Cunette, and a certain thin white wine at the Barriere du Com pat._

This fella is what i would call epicurean. The best coffee, the best games, the best chicken, cakes, wine – he knows how to enjoy the good things in life. And purely from this little section, we can gather that he loafs probably just about as much as Bahorel.

From “Enjolras and his lieutenants” later on we can infer even more. He has a tiny monologue there when he describes, off the top of his head, the route he will take to get to the Barrière du Maine. It’s not much of a stretch to think that he knows the layout of the rest of the city on foot very very well.

He wanders. He roams.

While he doesn’t have as many political contacts as the rest of the group – since he doesn’t have any political inclinations himself – he probably knows just as many people as they do. He’s a social creature.

> _He knew the best place for everything; in addition, boxing and foot-fencing and some dances; and he was a thorough single-stick player._

I’m gonna quote an exchange I had with a friend on Discord about this sentence here.

**clio:**  ok so uhh singlesticks is LIKE fencing only with a fuckin uh, 3ft pole with a leather bucket on one end to protect your hand  
and the primary guard is you stand with your arm up over your head with the stick pointing at the other guy so first of all, arm strength  
and point goes to the head, not anything else, BUT everything else is fair game  
so if you + opponent are equally skilled and you both hate each other a little  
you can just spend 5-10 minutes in the ring beating each other black and blue  
until one of you gets tired and decides to end the fight with a tap to the head  
so just like ……… i just ….. hes described with a fuckjn, he knows boxing and chausson and a bit of dancing, and hes a profound singlestick fighter  
IF people rememver that bit its only the boxing they think of!  
I WANNA SEE R SMACKIN AND GETTING SMACKED WITH A STICK  
**sam:**  that’s so grantaire though…  
i don’t know how to convey with typed words what i’m feeling right now  
**clio:**  ?  
**sam:**  an equivalent of fencing with poles instead of swords where there’s only one way to score a point but everything else is allowed, leading to matches of people beating each other where they know they’ll never score a point  
**clio:** oh  
fuck  
youre right  
grantaire: it’s fun idk what you’re talking about!  
joly: you have three cracked ribs.  
**sam:**  the futility of the exercise but the skill needed to pull it off…  
**clio:**  drawing it out painfully because at least thats more interesting than ending it quickly  
singlesticks originated in the highlands with scottish clans handing their 5 year old sons friggin sticks to teach them how to fight their feuds  
it isnt fancy and refined, it isnt stylish, it requires skill and speed and strength and it gets the job done, and its an outlet for destructive energy that is frowned upon elsewhere  
courfeyrac with his sword cane knows how to fence. grantaires got a stick.  
“il savait .. quelques danses” only the fast ones ill bet, i dont think hed have the patience for the slow ones  
all his patience would be reserved for drawing and even then it would have a time limit. buddy would rather eat the apples than draw them

Also known as: y’all, get thee to Google and find out if there’s a local HEMA (historical european martial arts) chapter near you. It’s a lot of fun and you get some practical experiences in there with it, if you’re the writerly type.

ALSO known as: Grantaire can definitely hold his own in a fight.

He has skill, he has precision. He doesn’t just loaf, he lives. He is a corporeal being in every sense of the word.

If Enjolras is fire and air, Grantaire is earth and water. And this isn’t a bad thing.

> _He was a tremendous drinker to boot._

A single line. Seven words. More words will be expended to describe this in various scenes later on, but for now, his alcoholism is only worth seven words.

> _He was inordinately homely: the prettiest boot-stitcher of that day, Irma Boissy, enraged with his homeliness, pronounced sentence on him as follows: “Grantaire is impossible”;_

In the French the phrase is “il était laid démesurément” : he was immeasurably ugly, disproportionately ugly, cartoonishly ugly.

How Ugly Is He?

He’s So Ugly that pretty girls get mad about how ugly he is.

No, wait, Hugo –  _wait_ , that can’t be it, you spent a zillion words talking about Javert’s physical description, about Fantine, hell, about Enjolras only a couple pages ago. You gotta tell us what kind of ugly Grantaire is! Tell us in words!!

> _but Grantaire’s fatuity was not to be disconcerted. He stared tenderly and fixedly at all women, with the air of saying to them all: “If I only chose!” and of trying to make his comrades believe that he was in general demand._

Nope. No physical description on that account. The audience is allowed to conjure their own version of ugliness and apply it to him.

And … oh, buddy. He makes moon eyes at ladies, he tells his friends that they can’t keep their hands off him. We don’t see him with a woman except when he’s harassing the waitstaff at the Musain and the Corinthe, though.

I don’t know about y’all, but I kind of see this as trying to compensate for a certain level of insecurity. When you have people telling you that you’re impossible because of your physical appearance, maybe sometimes you decide to pretend you’re the handsomest guy in the room just to give everyone else a safer target to aim at.

(It’s not a healthy coping mechanism. but … yeah, we’ll get to that too.)

> _All those words: rights of the people, rights of man, the social contract, the French Revolution, the Republic, democracy, humanity, civilization, religion, progress, came very near to signifying nothing whatever to Grantaire. He smiled at them. Scepticism, that caries of the intelligence, had not left him a single whole idea. He lived with irony. This was his axiom: “There is but one certainty, my full glass.” He sneered at all devotion in all parties, the father as well as the brother, Robespierre junior as well as Loizerolles. “They are greatly in advance to be dead,” he exclaimed. He said of the crucifix: “There is a gibbet which has been a success.” A rover, a gambler, a libertine, often drunk, he displeased these young dreamers by humming incessantly: “J’aimons les filles, et j’aimons le bon vin.” Air: Vive Henri IV._

This is bundled into one bit because breaking them down sentence by sentence amounts to the same thing:

He shuts himself off from politics, he dismisses them, because he would rather not think of them. He treats political ideology the same way he treats familial ties: Hapgood says he sneers at them, and Hugo says “il raillait” – which … holy moly, okay, let’s unpack that for a second.

“Il raillait” – he mocked, he jested, he taunted, he railed against it.

Hapgood, what the fuck?

To mock familial and political ties, alright, fine. To make teasing jokes about them, cool, trackin’. To rail against them …

Please please please tell me I’m not the only one who can see there’s a level of personal bitterness implied there.

And with this, tucked into the skepticism and quite easy to overlook, we have a snippet of underlying depression. “They are greatly in advance to be dead”? If he was alive today, you can bet he would be crown to toe top-full of suicide jokes.

It hurts him to believe in something. So rather than allowing himself to feel that pain, he shuts himself down from believing in anything.

Did I mention how he doesn’t do the healthy coping mechanism thing well?

> _However, this sceptic had one fanaticism. This fanaticism was neither a dogma, nor an idea, nor an art, nor a science; it was a man: Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras._

Oh boy. Here we go.

First up: it’s perfectly fine and normal to admire a person you love. It’s perfectly fine and normal to love someone.

It is not normal to venerate someone you know personally.

To venerate: to exalt: to worship.

Friends, this is pedestal-putting the likes of which we see in Nice Guys ™ which makes our hackles rise, is it not? Because we are people, and we don’t want to be treated like goddesses, because inevitably we will break that illusion and part of the relationship will shatter too as a result?

This is a train wreck waiting to happen.

> _To whom did this anarchical scoffer unite himself in this phalanx of absolute minds? To the most absolute. In what manner had Enjolras subjugated him? By his ideas? No. By his character. A phenomenon which is often observable. A sceptic who adheres to a believer is as simple as the law of complementary colors._

Scrapes hands down face.

Cripes.

Take careful note of the use of the word “subjugated” here. This is a direct cognate to the French.

I  _beg_  you not to find this romantic.

Does Enjolras mean to subjugate him? No. Definitely not. But does Enjolras consistently act in a manner which actively rejects anyone who does not actively seek to advance his cause? Yes. Very much yes.

Grantaire does not seek to advance his cause. He does not believe in Enjolras’ cause. He only believes in Enjolras – and out of the sheer force of his personality, not out of anything else.

He venerates Enjolras because of his personality. And Enjolras subjugates him – or Grantaire purposefully puts himself in that position – because they are opposites. In using complementary colors as a mini motif, Hugo implies that one is valueless without the other. However …

> _That which we lack attracts us. No one loves the light like the blind man. The dwarf adores the drum-major. The toad always has his eyes fixed on heaven. Why? In order to watch the bird in its flight. Grantaire, in whom writhed doubt, loved to watch faith soar in Enjolras. He had need of Enjolras._

… Hugo lays out pretty blatantly that he thinks belief is better than skepticism. Light, height, heaven, flight. Blindness, baseness, the earth, being earthbound.

I mentioned before that if Enjolras is fire and air, Grantaire is earth and water. That’s balance there, that’s complementary colors. Push and pull, light and dark, life and death. One needs the other, and vice versa.

For Hugo – as far as Enjolras and Grantaire are concerned – darkness needs light, but light does not need the dark. There is no vice versa. There is no equal exchange.

Enjolras does not need Grantaire in any way. When talking of who completes Enjolras, Hugo speaks of Combeferre, philosophy and humanity. He speaks of Courfeyrac, the warmth, the center. The triumvirate balance each other out. Grantaire doesn’t even enter into the equation.

Grantaire is the shadow on the wall of Plato’s cave; Enjolras is that which casts the shadow.

Grantaire is error, and Enjolras is truth.

> _That chaste, healthy, firm, upright, hard, candid nature charmed him, without his being clearly aware of it, and without the idea of explaining it to himself having occurred to him. He admired his opposite by instinct._

Given that Grantaire finds it painful to believe in anything, it’s completely understandable that he would be attracted to someone who can believe so vehemently, including – maybe even especially – revolutionary republicanism.

So far so logical. But I smell a rat …

> _His soft, yielding, dislocated, sickly, shapeless ideas attached themselves to Enjolras as to a spinal column. His moral backbone leaned on that firmness. Grantaire in the presence of Enjolras became some one once more._

… and there it is.

Here is the problem.

Lack of ideals is an issue that Grantaire has, certainly. But it is a carefully cultivated lack. Remember: “[he] took good care not to believe in anything.”

Atheism is a religious choice just as much as any other, y’all. Same thing applies here.

_If there is a void inside Grantaire, it is one he hollowed out himself. And it is not Enjolras’ job to fill it._

And Grantaire already  _is_  somebody, even when Enjolras isn’t around! He knows the best place for billiards! And spatchcocked chicken! And thin white wine! And he knows a few dances! And he’s a thorough singlestick player!

That adds up to a whole person! One who, I might add, is not entirely consumed by his beliefs every waking hour the way that Enjolras “chastely dropped his eyes before everything which was not the Republic” seems to be!

> _He was, himself, moreover, composed of two elements, which were, to all appearance, incompatible. He was ironical and cordial. His indifference loved. His mind could get along without belief, but his heart could not get along without friendship. A profound contradiction; for an affection is a conviction. His nature was thus constituted._

Here it is again: Grantaire is a whole person, because he has hobbies and likes and dislikes, and he has  _friends_. And he  _loves_  his friends.

He has no ideological convictions, but he loves, which is in itself a conviction. Alright: he is contradictory. That’s okay. It means he is human.

He is somebody  _all by himself_.

> _There are men who seem to be born to be the reverse, the obverse, the wrong side. They are Pollux, Patrocles, Nisus, Eudamidas, Ephestion, Pechmeja. They only exist on condition that they are backed up with another man; their name is a sequel, and is only written preceded by the conjunction and; and their existence is not their own; it is the other side of an existence which is not theirs. Grantaire was one of these men. He was the obverse of Enjolras._

No. No no no noooooo. NO!!!

HUGO. LOOK AT WHAT YOU IMPLIED JUST BEFORE THIS. NOW LOOK AT WHAT YOU’VE JUST WRITTEN. DO YOU NOT SEE HOW IT IS YOU’VE JUST SNEERED AT THE VERY CHARACTER YOU’VE ESTABLISHED?

Look. I absolutely get that Hugo is going for that homoerotic vibe. That is EXACTLY what he is doing here. He might as well be shouting it with a megaphone. He couldn’t be more obvious than if he was making a comparison to Ganymede, Zeus’ personal  ~~boytoy~~  cupbearer.

But just like women do not exist solely in their attachment to men (re: Cosette and the problem of There Can Only Be One Man In My Life), neither do mlm exist solely in their attachment to their lovers.

(Note, here, that every homoerotic example Hugo provides is one which the classical scholars argued as being the “beloved”, not the “lover” – i.e., the passive one in the relationship, and not the pursuer.)

Grantaire is Enjolras’ opposite, sure. Sure. I can hang with that. But he is not a sequel. He is not an appendage. He is his own person.

> _One might almost say that affinities begin with the letters of the alphabet. In the series O and P are inseparable. You can, at will, pronounce O and P or Orestes and Pylades._

Neat little literary trick there, buddy, I see you. And yet!

I did a lil  _research_  on this and boy does it only make me madder. Apparently, Pylades only has a handful of speaking lines in Aeschylus’ Oresteia, if that. He exists as Orestes’ helpmeet in the vengeance he takes, and that is all. “Passive” doesn’t even begin to explain it. Pylades only has scenes when Orestes has need of him. And once Orestes exits the story, Pylades vanishes without a trace.

The clear implication being that as Pylades is to Orestes – minion, friend, beloved – so too is Grantaire to Enjolras. Or at least, so he wants to be …

> _Grantaire, Enjolras’ true satellite, inhabited this circle of young men; he lived there, he took no pleasure anywhere but there; he followed them everywhere. His joy was to see these forms go and come through the fumes of wine. They tolerated him on account of his good humor._

… But that isn’t quite right. Because again, Grantaire has been shown to exist as a person outside Enjolras. He has hobbies, he has friends. He adheres himself to Enjolras, but he cannot be as Pylades to Enjolras’ Orestes,  _because he exists outside Enjolras’ revolution_. and his very first scene in the back room of the Musain is one in which he does not interact with Enjolras at all.

> _Enjolras, the believer, disdained this sceptic; and, a sober man himself, scorned this drunkard. He accorded him a little lofty pity. Grantaire was an unaccepted Pylades. Always harshly treated by Enjolras, roughly repulsed, rejected yet ever returning to the charge, he said of Enjolras: “What fine marble!”_

And here we finally have Enjolras’ thoughts on the matter: disdain and a little lofty pity.

Tell me – when you love someone, do you want them to pity you? To look down upon you from high above, and say, “ew, gross,” and then move on with their life?

Please. Please look at the word choice here.  _Harshly treated_.  _Roughly repulsed_.  _Rejected_.  _Unaccepted_.

Is Enjolras wrong to treat him this way? Kinda no. Grantaire belittles his cause, he takes up his friends’ attention by not shutting up for five pages at a time, he volunteers to help but then doesn’t follow through.

But also kinda yeah. Enjolras is a jerk to Grantaire. He asks him if it’s possible he can be good for something, rhetorically, with the answer obvious in his mind that Grantaire is good for nothing. He tells him he is incapable of believing, of thinking, of wanting, of living, and of dying. For now we aren’t given any specifics, but again – the language here,  _harshly treated_  and  _roughly repulsed_ , tells us that Enjolras isn’t nice about it at all.

That shit hurts  _me_ , and i’m not even the one Enjo is talking to.

Enjolras probably isn’t aware that Grantaire is in love with him. Hell, Hugo makes sure to tell us that Grantaire isn’t even fully aware of his own feelings. But …

… Grantaire. Honey. When someone rejects you, when someone treats you harshly, the healthy thing to do is to stop putting yourself in their path.

This is the one instance (outside singlesticks) in which Grantaire seeks out that which he knows will cause him pain, instead of numbing himself ahead of time to prevent it.

Again and again he puts himself in a position to be rejected, without even knowing why.

This is the part where I devolve into wordless pterodactyl shrieking.


	2. the back room of the café musain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> or: grantaire is a VERY sad gremlin man, but he has good friends.

Action intro! The first time we see Grantaire actually interacting with other characters, versus a prose description. Basing the analysis off Hapgood’s translation [here](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.online-literature.com%2Fvictor_hugo%2Fles_miserables%2F179%2F&t=NThiYTIwZDg2OTM4NmY5YTI0MTBmODQ3ODU3OTQ1MDgwODhmMDU2NCxOekc2cWpPWg%3D%3D&b=t%3A-xgIwv6rQKKJyyQisSqL5Q&p=http%3A%2F%2Fparticolored-arts.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F180993095890%2Fgrantaire-is-in-love-with-enjolras-and-enjolras-is&m=0).

We’re going sentence by sentence, or handful of sentences, because my boy Grantaire doesn’t know what ¶ means. He’s never heard of it. Never seen it before in his life. Is that like, an indie band? How do you even pronounce it?

Anyway.

We’ve been given the groundwork for what to expect in his prose intro, and now: lights, camera, action …

> _Grantaire, thoroughly drunk, was deafening the corner of which he had taken possession, reasoning and contradicting at the top of his lungs, and shouting: –_

Of course he’s commandeered a corner of the room. Of course he is shouting at the top of his lungs. My garbage son is a nerd, and a dramatic nerd at that.

> _“I am thirsty. Mortals, I am dreaming: that the tun of Heidelberg has an attack of apoplexy, and that I am one of the dozen leeches which will be applied to it._

You know, when I went to look this up, I don’t rightly know what I was expecting. Maybe something poetic.

Nope.

The Heidelberg Tun is a wine cask in a castle in Germany, constructed in 1751, which has the capacity to store  _nearly 60,000 gallons_  of wine.

Grantaire. Honey. You overdramatic dumpsterfire. Darling.

_No_.

> _I want a drink. I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention of I know not whom. It lasts no time at all, and is worth nothing. One breaks one’s neck in living. Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances. Happiness is an antique reliquary painted on one side only._

Sound familiar to anyone?

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in its petty pace from day to day, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow: a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Cripes, now  _I_  want a drink.

> _Ecclesiastes says: ‘All is vanity.’ I agree with that good man, who never existed, perhaps. Zero not wishing to go stark naked, clothed himself in vanity. O vanity! The patching up of everything with big words! a kitchen is a laboratory, a dancer is a professor, an acrobat is a gymnast, a boxer is a pugilist, an apothecary is a chemist, a wigmaker is an artist, a hodman is an architect, a jockey is a sportsman, a wood-louse is a pterigybranche._

Wow, what set my dude off? He’s pretty clearly got an axe to grind about vanity. Oh wait –

“Aucune femme n’était admise dans cette arrière-salle, excepté Louison, la laveuse de vaisselle du café, qui la traversait de temps en temps pour aller de la laverie au  **«**  laboratoire  **»**.”

“A kitchen is a laboratory.”

… Honey. Honey. Leave Louison alone. Let her have her fun. This is not a reason to start monologuing to all and sundry.

> _Vanity has a right and a wrong side; the right side is stupid, it is the negro with his glass beads; the wrong side is foolish, it is the philosopher with his rags. I weep over the one and I laugh over the other. What are called honors and dignities, and even dignity and honor, are generally of pinchbeck. Kings make playthings of human pride. Caligula made a horse a consul; Charles II. made a knight of a sirloin. Wrap yourself up now, then, between Consul Incitatus and Baronet Roastbeef._

You know the saying about even broken clocks being right twice a day?

Sometimes skepticism is toxic crap, but sometimes it lets you see through the crap too. Grantaire sees the way people try to elevate their lives with fancy words, and he sees how different motivations play into that vanity, and, well …

… He weeps at poor people’s efforts to dress up their circumstances with a little prettiness. He laughs at rich people’s affectations of more virtue than they actually possess. And he wraps himself back up in sarcasm.

And puns, too, oh my God. It’s impossible to translate it properly into English, but this is what he does in French:

“Caligula faisait consul un  _cheval_  ; Charles II faisait  _chevalier_  un aloyau.” (Emphasis mine.)

MY GARBAGE SON IS A NERD.

> _As for the intrinsic value of people, it is no longer respectable in the least. Listen to the panegyric which neighbor makes of neighbor. White on white is ferocious; if the lily could speak, what a setting down it would give the dove! A bigoted woman prating of a devout woman is more venomous than the asp and the cobra._

Here we go, cutting through the crap yet again.

Please.  _Please_. This is Fantine’s story from beginning to end. Grantaire, without knowing her, has described her tragedy and her victimhood in its entirety.

And, unaware of how he is speaking precisely about the suffering of a single person (a symbol for all women), he uses an example of human meanness to condemn all of humanity.

> _It is a shame that I am ignorant, otherwise I would quote to you a mass of things; but I know nothing._

????????????????

Self deprecation much??

Even if he’s being sarcastic here (signs point to yes), it’s still a baffling statement. Already we’ve had references to five separate events, people, or things outside what turns up in ordinary conversation, and all of this right off the top of his head.

> _For instance, I have always been witty; when I was a pupil of Gros, instead of daubing wretched little pictures, I passed my time in pilfering apples; rapin[24] is the masculine of rapine._
> 
> _[24] The slang term for a painter’s assistant._

Alright. I’ve already addressed his impatience in drawing apples from still life in part one – let’s take a look at that play on words there, rapin and rapine.

Rapin: painter’s assistant. Rapine: direct cognate with the English …

Rapine: plunder: thievery.

In stealing apples from the still life he was supposed to paint, he was a rapin who committed a rapine.

DID I MENTION THAT MY GARBAGE SON IS A HUGE NERD?

> __So much for myself; as for the rest of you, you are worth no more than I am. I scoff at your perfections, excellencies, and qualities. Every_  good quality tends towards a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous man is next door to the prodigal, the brave man rubs elbows with the braggart; he who says very pious says a trifle bigoted; there are just as many vices in virtue as there are holes in Diogenes’ cloak._

From “Javert satisfied”:

> _Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand: their majesty, the majesty peculiar to the human conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtues which have one vice, – error. The honest, pitiless joy of a fanatic in the full flood of his atrocity preserves a certain lugubriously venerable radiance._

HELLO???  _HELLO?????_

Grantaire has summed up Fantine; now he sums up Javert.

Hey. Hugo.

_Hey_.  _Hugo_.

_**Vicky**_.

I got a question.

If you’re trying to make Grantaire so obnoxious,  _why do you keep having him say things that support your previous plot points??_

Back to “The back room of the Café Musain.”

> _Whom do you admire, the slain or the slayer, Caesar or Brutus? Generally men are in favor of the slayer. Long live Brutus, he has slain! There lies the virtue. Virtue, granted, but madness also. There are queer spots on those great men. The Brutus who killed Caesar was in love with the statue of a little boy. This statue was from the hand of the Greek sculptor Strongylion, who also carved that figure of an Amazon known as the Beautiful Leg, Eucnemos, which Nero carried with him in his travels. This Strongylion left but two statues which placed Nero and Brutus in accord. Brutus was in love with the one, Nero with the other._

Here my boy is trying to connect vice and virtue again, but this is more of a “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” thing, not the overextension of virtue that he was talking about previously. And uh, this particular argument here is … kinda weak? I think?

The thing is, you are never more than five feet away from a spider at any given moment. This is a literal fact and a metaphorical fact. There’s immorality in the world, and since it is in the same world as goodness, they cannot be completely divided from each other. But that doesn’t mean the evil isn’t still evil, or that the good isn’t still good. It just means you have to look at the whole picture.

(This reminds me a little of the theme that Hugo tries to hammer in his comparison of Enjolras to the bird which soars and Grantaire as the earthbound toad. The one is connected to the other. Does that mean that the bird elevates the toad? Or that the toad drags the bird down? Not sure what  ~~Hugo~~  Grantaire is going for here exactly, but not liking the implication much …)

> _All history is nothing but wearisome repetition. One century is the plagiarist of the other. The battle of Marengo copies the battle of Pydna; the Tolbiac of Clovis and the Austerlitz of Napoleon are as like each other as two drops of water._

And this is the guy who said he knew nothing.

“Repetition” is the term Hapgood uses, which is one translation of the original rabâchage. But it can also be translated as “regurgitation.”

Y’all: he has been educated in history, and he looks around and sees it repeating itself, and it wearies him, and it disgusts him, and it saddens him.

Also – I hate to keep harping on translations but  _y’all_ :

“Le Tolbiac de Clovis et l’Austerlitz de Napoléon se ressemblent comme deux gouttes de  _sang_.” (Emphasis mine.)

SANG! BLOOD! NOT WATER!

WHAT THE FUCK, HAPGOOD?

> _I don’t attach much importance to victory. Nothing is so stupid as to conquer; true glory lies in convincing. But try to prove something! If you are content with success, what mediocrity, and with conquering, what wretchedness! Alas, vanity and cowardice everywhere. Everything obeys success, even grammar. Si volet usus, says Horace. Therefore I disdain the human race._

“Rien n’est stupide  _comme vaincre_  ; la vraie gloire est  _convaincre_.”

Here’s my boy, back at it again with the untranslatable word play.

He isn’t staying on topic, really. What we’ve got here is full stream-of-consciousness ramble. We’ve gone from vanity, to virtue becoming vice, to the inevitable ties between horror and hero, to the awful repetition of history, and now to victory. And thence …

> _Shall we descend to the party at all? Do you wish me to begin admiring the peoples? What people, if you please? Shall it be Greece? The Athenians, those Parisians of days gone by, slew Phocion, as we might say Coligny, and fawned upon tyrants to such an extent that Anacephorus said of Pisistratus: “His urine attracts the bees.” The most prominent man in Greece for fifty years was that grammarian Philetas, who was so small and so thin that he was obliged to load his shoes with lead in order not to be blown away by the wind. There stood on the great square in Corinth a statue carved by Silanion and catalogued by Pliny; this statue represented Episthates. What did Episthates do? He invented a trip. That sums up Greece and glory. Let us pass on to others._

… to Phocion, who was an Athenian politician quite popular with the people and who seemed to rule quite fairly for several decades, until the Macedonians came along invading as Macedonians do, and the Athenians killed him for not capitulating. Grantaire then ferociously condemns the Athenians with that little, uh, vulgar quote right there.

In five words, a single breath, Grantaire compares Phocion to Coligny – presumably Gaspard II de Coligny, a prominent Huguenot in the mid-to-late 1500s. Coligny worked to establish Huguenot colonies in Brazil and Spanish Florida, fought in a series of wars, fell in with Charles IX, and was ultimately ordered assassinated by Henri de Navarre’s mother-in-law the queen mother Catherine de Medici. All this leading up to the War of the Three Henrys.

(Yaaaaay for Wikipedia.)

Thus R links the two ideas together: assassination for refusing to admit to a conquering nation, and assassination for trying to protect religious freedom. And all this, again, in just five words.

BUDDY.

Not much to say regarding Philetas – the fella apparently didn’t do much all else besides write, and teach, and practically starve to death because he was too busy doing the first two things.

Episthates flummoxed me for a hot second, I must admit. The only references to him I could find were in Les Mis. But the original French is “Épisthate,” which, while not a word, can be turned into “épistate,” which is not a proper name but the French term for an ancient Greek magistrate.

Which magistrate does Grantaire mean? Well, the only statue carved by Silanion and catalogued by Pliny that’s associated with Athens is a bust of Plato.

And what says Grantaire of Plato? That he invented a trip. Literally. Croc-en-jambe, the act of tripping someone.

And that’s that on Greece!

> _Shall I admire England? Shall I admire France? France? Why? Because of Paris? I have just told you my opinion of Athens. England? Why? Because of London? I hate Carthage. And then, London, the metropolis of luxury, is the headquarters of wretchedness. There are a hundred deaths a year of hunger in the parish of Charing-Cross alone. Such is Albion._

[I’ve mentioned it already](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16896006), but … this bit right here … this is it.

This is, essentially, Grantaire’s thesis. (Not MY thesis but there you have it.)

He hates the world because of how much misery it contains.

> _I add, as the climax, that I have seen an Englishwoman dancing in a wreath of roses and blue spectacles. A fig then for England!_

I have looked and looked and I cannot find out what the hell an Englishwoman dancing with a crown of roses and blue glasses is supposed to mean. If anyone knows, please tell me. I am profoundly confused.

> _If I do not admire John Bull, shall I admire Brother Jonathan? I have but little taste for that slave-holding brother. Take away Time is money, what remains of England? Take away Cotton is king, what remains of America?_

GOD BE GOOD. LOOK AT THIS. LOOK AT THIS!!!

What is it the kids say nowadays when you read someone for filth? “Wig”? Is that what you say? That’s what Grantaire just did to England and the United States.

_Les Misérables_  was published in 1863. Smack dab in the middle of the American Civil War. If we didn’t know Hugo’s opinions about it before, we sure do now!

> _Germany is the lymph, Italy is the bile. Shall we go into ecstasies over Russia? Voltaire admired it. He also admired China. I admit that Russia has its beauties, among others, a stout despotism; but I pity the despots. Their health is delicate. A decapitated Alexis, a poignarded Peter, a strangled Paul, another Paul crushed flat with kicks, divers Ivans strangled, with their throats cut, numerous Nicholases and Basils poisoned, all this indicates that the palace of the Emperors of Russia is in a condition of flagrant insalubrity._

The lymph: a source of phlegm, in terms of the four humors. To be phlegmatic is to be cold and wet and to flush out illness. And that’s that on Germany.

The bile: black bile as melancholy, which thickens, or yellow bile as choler, which consumes. And that’s that on Italy.

Grantaire is not having it with the elevation of Europe over everyone else. Or at least, the elevation of western Europe.

But then he turns east towards Russia, and basically this whole bit right here is just Grantaire looking at the history of imperial Russia and going “yikes.”

> _All civilized peoples offer this detail to the admiration of the thinker; war; now, war, civilized war, exhausts and sums up all the forms of ruffianism, from the brigandage of the Trabuceros in the gorges of Mont Jaxa to the marauding of the Comanche Indians in the Doubtful Pass._

“Trabuceros in Mont Jaxa” has a similar problem as “Episthetes”: the only English references are to Les Mis, or to advertisements for various Latin bands or commercially produced products. But the original French is “trabucaire,” which Larousse defines as either members of the Spanish army or brigands in the Pyrenées.

Comanche in the Doubtful Pass is an error on Hugo’s part: it was actually Apache natives who carried out the raids in the Doubtful Canyon. So called, actually, because the Apache made white settlers doubt whether they would pass through it safely.

Sounds like the Apache were pretty justified in those skirmishes, though, I’d say, especially given, oh, I don’t know, everything about U.S. history. Comparing the skirmish in the Doubtful Canyon to trabucaires’ pillaging seems pretty disingenuous to me.

(Though it’s not like the French don’t have plenty of skeletons in the closet about colonialism themselves, either.)

> _‘Bah!’ you will say to me, ‘but Europe is certainly better than Asia?’ I admit that Asia is a farce; but I do not precisely see what you find to laugh at in the Grand Lama, you peoples of the west, who have mingled with your fashions and your elegances all the complicated filth of majesty, from the dirty chemise of Queen Isabella to the chamber-chair of the Dauphin. Gentlemen of the human race, I tell you, not a bit of it!_

Alright, trackin’, yadda yadda yadda …

Hapgood at it again with the weird translation, though, because this last sentence in French is “messieurs les humains, je vous dis bernique !”

Which … according to [Argoji](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.russki-mat.net%2Fargot%2FArgoji.php&t=NTc3Y2NiODE5ZDRhOTJlZDdkYjQzMmRjYzdlMWI5ZjhmN2QwM2YyYyxOekc2cWpPWg%3D%3D&b=t%3A-xgIwv6rQKKJyyQisSqL5Q&p=http%3A%2F%2Fparticolored-arts.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F180993095890%2Fgrantaire-is-in-love-with-enjolras-and-enjolras-is&m=0), my other favorite translation machine, “bernique” means “I don’t want this.”

Grantaire, honey …

> _It is at Brussels that the most beer is consumed, at Stockholm the most brandy, at Madrid the most chocolate, at Amsterdam the most gin, at London the most wine, at Constantinople the most coffee, at Paris the most absinthe; there are all the useful notions. Paris carries the day, in short._

… Honey. No.

But here he is at it again, honestly: this is in keeping with his prose description from two chapters ago. Grantaire cares about  _things_  because it’s easier to care about things than about people. And he’s here for a good time not a long time, so absinthe wins out over everything else, including chocolate and coffee.

> _In Paris, even the rag-pickers are sybarites; Diogenes would have loved to be a rag-picker of the Place Maubert better than to be a philosopher at the Piraeus._

A sybarite: a bon viveur, a libertine, a voluptuary. In Paris even the most miserable can live in style.

> _Learn this in addition; the wineshops of the ragpickers are called bibines; the most celebrated are the Saucepan and The Slaughter-House. Hence, tea-gardens, goguettes, caboulots, bouibuis, mastroquets, bastringues, manezingues, bibines of the rag-pickers, caravanseries of the caliphs,_

As for substance, my boy isn’t saying much of anything right here. All these fun vocab words are essentially just fancy terms for types of cafés and restaurants.

But look at how it scans in French:

“Donc, ô guinguettes, goguettes, caboulots, bouibuis, mastroquets, bastringues, manezingues, bibines des chiffoniers, caravanséreils des califs”.

THIS TONGUE-TWISTING FOOL!

It’s a good thing he’s from the south and therefore he speaks slowly, because if he was from the north of France and was saying this in rapid Ch’ti speed, nobody would be able to understand him!

> _I certify to you, I am a voluptuary, I eat at Richard’s at forty sous a head, I must have Persian carpets to roll naked Cleopatra in! Where is Cleopatra? Ah! So it is you, Louison. Good day.”_

HONEY.

It’s been five pages. And this is where he pauses. And there has been not a single paragraph break in all that time.

> _Thus did Grantaire, more than intoxicated, launch into speech, catching at the dish-washer in her passage, from his corner in the back room of the Cafe Musain._

Honey. No. Leave her be.

And I hope he hasn’t been monologuing at her this whole time. I dearly, dearly hope he only caught her by the arm for this last bit.

Actually, you know what, death of the author. Since Hugo didn’t spell out precisely whether or not Grantaire has been harassing Louison for the last five pages entirely, I am going to infer that he has  _not_  done so, and that it is only in the space of the last couple sentences that he specifically apprehended her. I can do that. I have the power.

> _Bossuet, extending his hand towards him, tried to impose silence on him, and Grantaire began again worse than ever: –_
> 
> _“Aigle de Meaux, down with your paws. You produce on me no effect with your gesture of Hippocrates refusing Artaxerxes’ bric-a-brac. I excuse you from the task of soothing me._

“I EXCUSE YOU FROM THE TASK OF SOOTHING ME.”

This implies:

A) it has at some point become a habit for Bossuet to calm him down from his tirades, and

B) Bossuet doesn’t bat an eye at his rambling; he only interferes when he sees Grantaire is bothering someone else, specifically Louison.

Good man, Bossuet.

> _Moreover, I am sad. What do you wish me to say to you? Man is evil, man is deformed; the butterfly is a success, man is a failure. God made a mistake with that animal._

HONEY …

> _A crowd offers a choice of ugliness. The first comer is a wretch._

In the French: “une foule est un choix de laideurs.”

A crowd is a choice of uglinesses – or ugly men, I suppose. Thus implying the mob without outright saying it.

> _Femme – woman – rhymes with infame, – infamous._

… Sort of on the same theme? But getting a bit incoherent now, R, despite yet another good pun. (This is the second play on words Hapgood describes in her translation. Well, 2/4 ain’t bad.)

But he’s on a roll now, and as we’ve seen, he’s more than drunk. I guess it doesn’t have to make any sense at this point.

> _Yes, I have the spleen, complicated with melancholy, with homesickness, plus hypochondria, and I am vexed and I rage, and I yawn, and I am bored, and I am tired to death, and I am stupid! Let God go to the devil!”_
> 
> _“Silence then, capital R!” resumed Bossuet,_

Oh this part makes me sad. The first part is pretty much word for word transliterated, but once we get to the verbs it’s more complicated. Let’s break down the french word for word:

“et je bisque” – and I am furious (very old argot, as the modern literally translates to “shrimp”)

“et je rage” – and I rage

“et je bâille” – and I yawn

“et je m’ennuie” – and I am bored

“et je m’assomme” – and I am stunned/stricken/knocked out (the Larousse definition has the verb used in a hunting context for all of its examples)

“et je m’embête !” – and I bother myself!

“Que Dieu aille au diable !” – God can go to hell!

God can go to hell – well. That sums up the last five pages pretty succinctly, I suppose.

Needless to say, he’s working himself up into a real tizzy here. And whether Bossuet’s still interfering on behalf of Louison, or whether he’s seen how upset Grantaire is now, the action is the same: he tells Grantaire, in words this time instead of a gesture, to be quiet.

And it seems to work!

> _who was discussing a point of law behind the scenes, and who was plunged more than waist high in a phrase of judicial slang, of which this is the conclusion: –_
> 
> _“–And as for me, although I am hardly a legist, and at the most, an amateur attorney, I maintain this: that, in accordance with the terms of the customs of Normandy, at Saint-Michel, and for each year, an equivalent must be paid to the profit of the lord of the manor, saving the rights of others, and by all and several, the proprietors as well as those seized with inheritance, and that, for all emphyteuses, leases, freeholds, contracts of domain, mortgages–”_
> 
> _“Echo, plaintive nymph,” hummed Grantaire._

The reference to Echo and Narcissus is one thing, but look at the tone with which it’s delivered. Grantaire isn’t antagonistic anymore. He isn’t agitated. With the single command to be silent, Grantaire has mellowed quite a bit – he’s even humming. And he relegates himself to a single sentence as an aside, instead of launching once more into a tirade.

Well, would you look at that. Grantaire and his friend Bossuet are interacting in a constructive manner, which has a positive outcome.

Grantaire is a sad guy. He disguises it with jokes, with puns, he dresses it up in long-winded comparisons and references and quick flashing asides, but he is a sad person underneath it all – and anyone who’s really paying attention to what he says can see it very clearly.

He starts out grumpy, he works himself into indignation, and from there quite easily into true melancholy and belligerence.

Yet even in that heightened state, a handful of words from a friend can bring him back to docility.

Keep this in mind, when we go to the Barrière du Maine scene for part three. Grantaire can be read just as easily as a book, if you take the time to listen and try to understand.

And he can be managed, with a little gentle brusqueness. Oxymoron? Not really. For some people, telling them to snap out of a spiral is the opposite of productive, but it works with Grantaire.

He has a cheat code. It’s called kindness; not necessarily niceness, not necessarily softness, but kindness.

* * *

As a coda, let’s slip over to Bahorel and Joly’s conversation regarding winning back a sulking girlfriend.

> _“In your place, I would let her alone.”_
> 
> _“That is easy enough to say.”_
> 
> _“And to do. Is not her name Musichetta?”_
> 
> _“Yes. Ah! my poor Bahorel, she is a superb girl, very literary, with tiny feet, little hands, she dresses well, and is white and dimpled, with the eyes of a fortune-teller. I am wild over her.”_
> 
> _“My dear fellow, then in order to please her, you must be elegant, and produce effects with your knees. Buy a good pair of trousers of double-milled cloth at Staub’s. That will assist.”_
> 
> _“At what price?” shouted Grantaire._

First of all: Bahorel knows what’s up.

And second, and last:

Grantaire, overhearing his friends speaking about a panacea for relationship trouble, jumps into the conversation – from across the room – to ask how much these magical trousers cost, with an implication that he wants to buy them.

God bless.


	3. enjolras and his lieutenants

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> or: oh gawd the secondhand embarrassment is awful.

Prologue: a short interlude in which Grantaire interacts with other people and there is minimal drama.

From “Marius, while seeking a Girl in a Bonnet Encounters a Man in a Cap” :

> _Once, having confidence in a fine September sun, Marius had allowed himself to be taken to the ball at Sceaux by Courfeyrac, Bossuet, and Grantaire, hoping, what a dream! that he might, perhaps, find her there. Of course he did not see the one he sought. – “But this is the place, all the same, where all lost women are found,” grumbled Grantaire in an aside. Marius left his friends at the ball and returned home on foot, alone, through the night, weary, feverish, with sad and troubled eyes, stunned by the noise and dust of the merry wagons filled with singing creatures on their way home from the feast, which passed close to him, as he, in his discouragement, breathed in the acrid scent of the walnut-trees, along the road, in order to refresh his head._

I need to stop calling grantaire “honey,” but somehow that is just the automatic response that pops into my head at these things ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Look at this, though. Grantaire’s second appearance in a scene (if barely described) is – wait for it – another one where Enjolras doesn’t enter into the equation. In fact it’s one of Courfeyrac’s attempts to cheer Marius up.

R is being a bit of a pill here, in that he’s niggling at Marius to find a new girl to moon over when clearly Marius wants to Not Do That, but – look at the wording. It’s an aside, and a short one at that. He’s not directing the comment directly at Marius, who no doubt would be morbidly offended by it. He’s not being obtrusive or annoying, just making a small remark. And that’s all of the description Hugo deigns to give us about it.

It’s a ball at Sceaux – Sceaux being about 10 km south by southwest from the center of Paris. There’s a little chateau there, a park, gardens, it’s very pretty. An event there would likely be one of several society events the likes of which Courfeyrac, as a former  _de_  Courfeyrac and therefore extremely bourgeois, probably gets invitations to on a regular basis.

Only it’s not only Courfeyrac who brings Marius along, it’s also Bossuet (who he first met; who is unluckily poor nine days out of ten) and Grantaire (who we hadn’t seen Marius interact with at all before; who is if not bad company then disreputable company).

I hate to keep hammering at the point, except that I don’t.

My garbage nerd son has good friends. and they enjoy his company enough that they don’t drag him along to parties complaining, he willingly goes with them from the get-go. It’s Marius who acts like the old “hit the ball drag Fred” golf joke.

Grantaire isn’t a burden on his friends. He loves them.

… Okay. Now that a small cute thing is out of the way, on to the main event.

Lots of screaming ahead, folks.

* * *

> _“That arranges everything,” said Courfeyrac._
> 
> _“No.”_
> 
> _“What else is there?”_
> 
> _“A very important thing.”_
> 
> _“What is that?” asked Courfeyrac._
> 
> _“The Barriere du Maine,” replied Enjolras._
> 
> _Enjolras remained for a moment as though absorbed in reflection, then he resumed: –_
> 
> _“At the Barriere du Maine there are marble-workers, painters, and journeymen in the studios of sculptors. They are an enthusiastic family, but liable to cool off. I don’t know what has been the matter with them for some time past. They are thinking of something else. They are becoming extinguished. They pass their time playing dominoes. There is urgent need that some one should go and talk with them a little, but with firmness. They meet at Richefeu’s. They are to be found there between twelve and one o'clock. Those ashes must be fanned into a glow._

So it looks like the Barrière du Maine is right up Grantaire’s alley, from the very first mention of it. Marble-workers ( “what fine marble!” ), painters, sculptors. These are people that Grantaire probably knows very well.

But the rest of Enjolras’ description is what, on the second read-through, made me thump my computer and say aloud, in probably  _too_  loud of a voice, “ _Really, Hugo??_ ”

An enthusiastic family, but liable to cool off. Thinking of something else. Pass their time playing dominoes. Those ashes must be fanned into a glow.

Does that sound ……….. like anybody  _else_ we know, Enjolras?

That Right Thar Sounds Like A Meta Fer Somethin’ If’n Ya Ask Me!

> _For that errand I had counted on that abstracted Marius, who is a good fellow on the whole, but he no longer comes to us._

RE – REALLY? YOU WERE GOING TO ASK MARIUS??

IT’S  **EIGHTEEN THIRTY-TWO** , ENJOLRAS. THE LAST TIME MARIUS CAME TO THE BACK ROOM OF THE MUSAIN WAS IN  **EIGHTEEN TWENTY-EIGHT**  WHEN COMBEFERRE HANDED HIS ASS TO HIM, ENJOLRAS. IT’S BEEN  **FOUR YEARS**.

Enjolras is sharp as a tack in terms of politics, in terms of persuasion, in terms of battle tactics. But the guy’s a little blunter in terms of interpersonal relationships. I love him. I do. I promise. He is also a nerd ( as exhibited by his wonderful off-the-cuff straight-faced pun earlier in this passage, “Joly will go to Dupuytren’s clinical lecture, and feel the pulse of the medical school” ), and I love him for it.

But – in keeping with other facets of his characterization ( “Silence in the presence of Jean-Jacques! I admire that man. He denied his own children, yes, but he adopted the people” ) – Enjolras really doesn’t have much of a clue about what makes normal human people tick.

Enjo is just as contradictory and human as Grantaire, and this scene is one place we really see it.

The artists at the Barrière du Maine need their passion for revolution to be stoked. Well. So does the one right in your backyard, Enjolras.

We know from the prose intro that Grantaire doesn’t believe. But has Enjolras ever tried to convert him? Or did he just hear Grantaire going off on a tangent about the hopelessness of the world, and never even bother?

This might come back to bite him …

> _I need some one for the Barriere du Maine. I have no one.”_
> 
> _“What about me?” said Grantaire. “Here am I.”_
> 
> _“You?”_
> 
> _“I.”_

Grantaire – who it is implied  _never_  does anything like this – has just volunteered for a mission.

Notice here that Enjolras tutoies Grantaire in the original French – he addresses him informally. This might be important later, especially because Hugo being Hugo, pronoun usage can be a major plot point.

> _“You indoctrinate republicans! you warm up hearts that have grown cold in the name of principle!”_
> 
> _“Why not?”_

BECAUSE YOU NEVER WANTED TO BEFORE.

Why does he want to do it now? We’re never given an answer. All we’re given is an outsider’s view – or Enjolras’ view – of the conversation. Nothing internal on Grantaire’s sudden wish to be useful. (Though knowing Hugo, and knowing me, that would just result in more screaming.)

> _“Are you good for anything?”_

In the original French, the question is, “Est-ce que tu peux être bon à quelque chose ?”

Literally: Can you be good for something?

This is a sarcastic, rhetorical question. Enjolras isn’t actually looking for an answer.

> _“I have a vague ambition in that direction,” said Grantaire._

But Grantaire answers it earnestly, as though Enjolras  _were_  looking for an answer. He’s frank with Enjolras: he has a vague ambition towards being good for something – i.e., the revolution – i.e., Enjolras. He wants to be good for Enjolras. (“Good,” as in “useful” : he wants to be as Pylades to him.)

Given Enjolras’ utter bewilderment just before this, this is probably the first time Grantaire has voiced anything of the sort. This is, and I cannot stress it enough, an abnormal occurrence.

> _“You do not believe in everything.”_
> 
> _“I believe in you.”_

WELL FUCK ME SIDEWAYS I GUESS !!!!!

Enjolras tutoies Grantaire, presumably out of that mild disdain mentioned from earlier chapters. “Tu ne crois à rien.” -> You believe in nothing.

Grantaire tutoies him back. “Je crois à toi.” -> I believe in you.

Note here, he says “Je crois  _à_  toi,” not “Je crois  _en_  toi.”

From [l’Académie française](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.academie-francaise.fr%2Fl-de-l-allemagne&t=MzMyMjliYzI5YjMxMzBjOGFmOTE4YzcyNWY2YmQxM2FiZDkxMmQ1YSxWU0prQ2RxWg%3D%3D&b=t%3A-xgIwv6rQKKJyyQisSqL5Q&p=http%3A%2F%2Fparticolored-arts.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F181031353770%2Fgrantaire-is-in-love-with-enjolras-and-enjolras-is&m=0) :

“ _Croire à quelqu’un_  signifie tenir pour certaine son existence, admettre son pouvoir : Il croit aux revenants. Il ne croit ni à Dieu ni à Diable.”

To hold someone’s existence for certain, to admit their power.

That is what he thinks of Enjolras. And he uses tutoiement to do it.

If he had vouvoied Enjolras (addressed him formally), I’m not gonna lie, I probably would have started shrieking, and not in a good way. But what it looks like here is Grantaire addressing Enjolras with the familiarity of a friend, when it’s just been made clear a handful of lines ago that they are  _not_ friends, they are just people who have friends in common.

(Or if you want to get really pedantic and symbolic, I can draw attention to the fact that the French use tutoiement for God as well as their friends and family. Probably for similar reasons, on a theological level, but I digress. Point being that this implies Grantaire believes in Enjolras the exact same way that someone else would believe in a deity.)

Look at this.  _Look_  at this. Grantaire is being utterly transparent about his feelings. He’s not diving off into an extended ramble, he’s not orating to all and sundry. He says four little words that mean everything, and he leaves it at that.

Grantaire’s dialogue so far in this scene has been short, concise, one sentence at a time. Sometimes even one word at a time. He’s really  _not_  trying to yank Enjolras’ chain here. At least –

> _“Grantaire will you do me a service?”_
> 
> _“Anything. I’ll black your boots.”_

– until this happens.

I have a suspicion that the joke, “I’ll black your boots,” with its possibly sexual undertones if you’ve got a dirty enough mind, is a hasty retreat from the earnestness of “Anything.” Grantaire has not yet understood that he is in love with Enjolras. (That won’t come until literally his dying breath.) But he does now understand that whatever he feels for Enjolras is very strong, and he’s a little afraid of the implication.

> _“Well, don’t meddle with our affairs. Sleep yourself sober from your absinthe.”_
> 
> _“You are an ingrate, Enjolras.”_

Enjolras soundly refuses Grantaire’s offer, tacking on a sentence implying that the only reason Grantaire offered at all is because he’s drunk off his gourd. And Grantaire replies – immediately – that Enjolras is ungrateful for rejecting him.

This is a once in a lifetime offer. Take it while it’s still on the table, buddy.

(Oh, Grantaire. The reverse also applies …)

> _“You the man to go to the Barriere du Maine! You capable of it!”_
> 
> _“I am capable of descending the Rue de Gres, of crossing the Place Saint-Michel, of sloping through the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, of taking the Rue de Vaugirard, of passing the Carmelites, of turning into the Rue d’Assas, of reaching the Rue du Cherche-Midi, of leaving behind me the Conseil de Guerre, of pacing the Rue des Vielles Tuileries, of striding across the boulevard, of following the Chaussee du Maine, of passing the barrier, and entering Richefeu’s. I am capable of that._

I’ve mentioned before in part one that this mini monologue works to show us how familiar Grantaire is with the city on foot. He can map out a route verbally on request. Whether he’s been cogitating over it from the first mention enjolras made of Richefeu’s, or whether he’s just speaking off-the-cuff in the moment, the point is he knows Paris (or at least that section of Paris) like the back of his hand.

> _My shoes are capable of that.”_

I love you.

> _“Do you know anything of those comrades who meet at Richefeu’s?”_
> 
> _“Not much. We only address each other as thou.”_

Grantaire tutoies the Richefeu gang. That sounds pretty dang useful to me!

But also …

… Okay. Time for a digression about translations, and translations of tutoiement and vouvoiement specifically.

Anyone who’s heard me rant about this before (and I know some of y’all have) can skip to the next quoted section. I’m just flogging a dead horse at this point.

But … Hapgood.  _Hapgood_. You’re my favorite translator for Les Mis. But if you’re gonna use the thou/you archaic English in/formal dichotomy, to show the tu/vous French in/formal dichotomy, then you have to be internally consistent.

Enjolras and Grantaire are addressing each other as “tu” the entire time. not “vous.” Therefore, the dialogue should go something like this:

Thou dost believe in nothing. / I believe in thee.

Grantaire, wilt thou do me a service? / Anything. I’ll black thy boots.

Well, do not meddle in our affairs. Sleep thyself sober from thine absinthe. / Thou art an ingrate, Enjolras.

Aound clunky and awkward? Well, yeah, to our modern ears, because English dropped the in/formal dichotomy pretty suddenly in the 17th century, and the “thou” form was solidified as an archaic form of speech in Samuel Johnson’s  _A Grammar of the English Tongue_.

Modern English doesn’t have a cultural understanding of the in/formal second person pronoun connotations the same way that French does. That’s a difference that translators have to juggle, and some of them struggle with it. I get it. I’ve tried my hand at translating passages from Les Mis before, I’ve torn my hair out over it with the Valjean & Javert barricade scene,  _I get it_. But …

Consistency is all I ask!

> _“What will you say to them?”_
> 
> _“I will speak to them of Robespierre, pardi! Of Danton. Of principles.”_
> 
> _“You?”_
> 
> _“I. But I don’t receive justice. When I set about it, I am terrible. I have read Prudhomme, I know the Social Contract, I know my constitution of the year Two by heart. ‘The liberty of one citizen ends where the liberty of another citizen begins.’_

Oh, honey.

He’s memorized so many other things. quoted Ecclesiastes, quoted Horace, pulled dates and figures out of his hat extemporaneously. And among all the myriad things he has memorized, he took the time to learn by heart the republican tracts that all of his friends espouse.

> _Do you take me for a brute?_

I don’t think you want the answer to that :(

> _I have an old bank-bill of the Republic in my drawer. The Rights of Man, the sovereignty of the people, sapristi! I am even a bit of a Hebertist. I can talk the most superb twaddle for six hours by the clock, watch in hand.”_

And I bet you can, at that, if worked into enough of a passion about it.

Grantaire talks about what he’s passionate about. He talks about the suffering of the world, the repetition of history, the inextricable link between vice and virtue. He cares about that.

He cares about Enjolras. And, if drunk enough, I would be willing to bet good money that given a sympathetic audience (sans the man himself), Grantaire could orate for hours about the pure and perfect halo of Enjolras’ golden hair, that symbol of his angelic nature upon the earth, that ferocious righteous cherubim of Ezekiel.

But he doesn’t care about the revolution in and of itself. Nobody has fanned those ashes into a glow. Grantaire could quote as much as he liked about the rights of man, but what audience would agree with a speaker who doesn’t even believe what he himself is saying?

> _“Be serious,” said Enjolras._
> 
> _“I am wild,” replied Grantaire._

And here’s the big quote. The one everyone trots out.

It’s a good quote. It’s … it’s a damn good quote.

It’s even better when you look at the original French.

“Sois sérieux.” “Je suis farouche.”

From [Larousse dictionary](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.larousse.fr%2Fdictionnaires%2Ffrancais%2Ffarouche%2F32922&t=NDMyMmRlMWQyNWQzMTkwNWZjZTI5MDBjYmZjMmNlODFmMjY0YTg4NyxWU0prQ2RxWg%3D%3D&b=t%3A-xgIwv6rQKKJyyQisSqL5Q&p=http%3A%2F%2Fparticolored-arts.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F181031353770%2Fgrantaire-is-in-love-with-enjolras-and-enjolras-is&m=0) :

“Se dit d’un animal sauvage qui fuit à l’approche de l’homme.  
Qui évite les contacts sociaux et dont l’abord est difficile.  
Qui exprime avec force, vigueur, la violence de quelqu’un ; âpre, véhément.”

Said of a savage animal that flees at the approach of a human.  
Someone who avoids social contact and whose social manner is difficult.  
Someone who expresses violence forcefully and vigorously upon someone ; harsh or fierce, vehement.

**To be farouche is not just to be wild. It is to be feral.**

> _Enjolras meditated for a few moments, and made the gesture of a man who has taken a resolution._
> 
> _“Grantaire,” he said gravely, “I consent to try you. You shall go to the Barriere du Maine.”_

Enjolras has listened to Grantaire. He has paid attention to the words that Grantaire says, maybe even for the first time ever. He has considered their meaning.

And the result is that he agrees to take a chance on him.

This is monumental! Enjolras has bent a little! Grantaire argued his case and he won!

This is a victory!

But a small one. Enjolras has given Grantaire the chance to do something for his cause. It’s what Grantaire does with the opportunity that matters the most.

> _Grantaire lived in furnished lodgings very near the Cafe Musain. He went out, and five minutes later he returned. He had gone home to put on a Robespierre waistcoat._
> 
> _“Red,” said he as he entered, and he looked intently at Enjolras._

Robespierre red. Grantaire has … a Robespierre red waistcoat.

I don’t even know what to say to that. I’ve been trying to think, all day, to come up with a coherent response to the fact that Grantaire owns a red Robespierre waistcoat. But I got nothing. Just inarticulate screaming.

> _Then, with the palm of his energetic hand, he laid the two scarlet points of the waistcoat across his breast._
> 
> _And stepping up to Enjolras, he whispered in his ear: –_
> 
> _“Be easy.”_
> 
> _He jammed his hat on resolutely and departed._

Oh God. Ooooh God. This is fine.

I wonder what everyone else was thinking when they saw that. I know I would have bluescreened.

And we’ve got a little time skip here. A quarter hour after Grantaire leaves (in his red Robespierre waistcoat), the café Musain is empty, and Enjolras is reflecting on the revolution, and his friends’ good work, and on his friends’ excellent qualities. It’s a really endearing little section. Enjolras isn’t just the metaphorical personification of revolution, he’s human, too. While he doesn’t have hobbies like Grantaire does (his hobby is REVOLUTION), he displays the same fiercely devoted love for his friends.

> _All hands to work. Surely, the result would answer to the effort. This was well. This made him think of Grantaire._

Aw, crap.

> _“Hold,” said he to himself, “the Barriere du Maine will not take me far out of my way. What if I were to go on as far as Richefeu’s? Let us have a look at what Grantaire is about, and see how he is getting on.”_

Oh no.

Does anybody else hear the Jaws theme in the background right now, or is it just me?

> _One o’clock was striking from the Vaugirard steeple when Enjolras reached the Richefeu smoking-room._
> 
> _He pushed open the door, entered, folded his arms, letting the door fall to and strike his shoulders, and gazed at that room filled with tables, men, and smoke._
> 
> _A voice broke forth from the mist of smoke, interrupted by another voice. It was Grantaire holding a dialogue with an adversary._

Google Earth to the rescue. It would take about 35-40 minutes on foot, provided a lack of traffic jams, to walk from the Musain to Richefeu’s. 30 at a brisk pace.

So let’s call it 45 minutes total between Grantaire’s departure and Enjolras’ arrival.

Given that it is one o’clock when Enjolras arrives at Richefeu’s, and it is twelve-fifteen when Grantaire departs the Musain, and it takes Grantaire the same length of time to traverse the city that Enjolras does –

(Ooooh, math in Les Mis. Hugo would be hissing like a cat confronted with water right now. TOO BAD, BUDDY.)

– Grantaire has been at Richefeu’s for fifteen minutes tops when Enjolras arrives to check on him.

> _Grantaire was sitting opposite another figure, at a marble Saint-Anne table, strewn with grains of bran and dotted with dominos. He was hammering the table with his fist, and this is what Enjolras heard: –_

Oh no. Oh no. Noooo. The build-up is  _terrible_. It’s. Aw, man. It’s a train wreck coming but you just can’t look away.

> _“Double-six.”_
> 
> _“Fours.”_
> 
> _“The pig! I have no more.”_
> 
> _“You are dead. A two.”_
> 
> _“Six.”_
> 
> _“Three.”_
> 
> _“One.”_
> 
> _“It’s my move.”_
> 
> _“Four points.”_
> 
> _“Not much.”_
> 
> _“It’s your turn.”_
> 
> _“I have made an enormous mistake.”_
> 
> _“You are doing well.”_
> 
> _“Fifteen.”_
> 
> _“Seven more.”_
> 
> _“That makes me twenty-two.” [Thoughtfully, “Twenty-two!”]_
> 
> _“You weren’t expecting that double-six. If I had placed it at the beginning, the whole play would have been changed.”_
> 
> _“A two again.”_
> 
> _“One.”_
> 
> _“One! Well, five.”_
> 
> _“I haven’t any.”_
> 
> _“It was your play, I believe?”_
> 
> _“Yes.”_
> 
> _“Blank.”_
> 
> _“What luck he has! Ah! You are lucky! [Long revery.] Two.”_
> 
> _“One.”_
> 
> _“Neither five nor one. That’s bad for you.”_
> 
> _“Domino.”_
> 
> _“Plague take it!”_

PLAGUE TAKE IT, INDEED!

I’ve seen other metas on Tumblr about this, about how they want Enjolras’ reaction to what he sees. What is Enjolras thinking, upon seeing this? Does he approach Grantaire? Does he scold him there, at Richefeu’s? Does he wait until later, when the company gathers again at the Musain, to give him the dressing-down (no innuendoes implied) that he deserves? Or does he never mention it at all?

I thoroughly agree with them. I want to resurrect ole Vicky and shake him by the shoulders until his teeth rattle and ask him, “Is that it? How can that be it?? You could write fifty pages about the bishop of Digne but you couldn’t spare even  _one_ more page on this???”

(That’s not the only thing I want to yell at him about, but that’s neither here nor there.)

We don’t get a follow-up to this scene. The next time that Grantaire appears, it is June fifth, and he is crashing Joly and Bossuet’s brunch date. From then on we’re in full pre-barricade mode.

And the other side to the coin: what on earth is Grantaire doing? The other meta writers are pretty vocal about this side of it too.

We’ve got a few options here.

  * Grantaire has already convinced the entire room to join the cause, and then decided to play a game of dominoes after his work is done (unlikely)
  * Grantaire has decided actively to break his promise to try to convince the artists to join the cause, and has decided to faff about and play dominoes instead (unlikely)
  * Grantaire has plum forgotten his promise to Enjolras and is just doing what he always does at Richefeu’s, which is playing dominoes with a casual acquaintance, no malice intended (likely)
  * Grantaire is in the process of working his way up to a one-on-one conversation about revolution, which is better started with a game of dominoes than with trying to command the attention of the entire room (likely)
  * Grantaire is doing what he always does at Richefeu’s, and is trying to think of ways to bring up revolution and therefore fulfill his promise to Enjolras, but is stymied for some reason (likely)



That’s really the issue with this scene ending so abruptly. There are multiple possibilities, all of them with different connotations. And with the end of the scene, we get Enjolras’ implied exit. Certainly we get the reader’s exit.

I personally like the last one. Grantaire simply isn’t passionate about the revolutionary cause: he’s passionate about Enjolras. But while passion for an individual man can be enough to galvanize people who already have something at stake or who already believe in the cause, it isn’t enough to galvanize people who currently don’t care much one way or another.

There are plenty of Watsonian explanations for why Grantaire is playing dominoes right now, and there are innumerable ways that fans can extend the scene. But the scene’s quick termination at this particular point has a specific Doylist implication here, as far as I can tell.

It doesn’t actually matter why Grantaire is playing dominoes right now.

Because the fact is that in  _this particular moment_  (the moment which Enjolras sees: the moment which matters), Grantaire is not doing what he promised to do.

Enjolras listened to Grantaire, and allowed him the opportunity to participate, probably for the very first time in all the time he’s known the man.

And Grantaire, for all intents and purposes, has squandered that opportunity.

This scene gets no follow-up because, for all intents and purposes, Enjolras now has concrete proof that Grantaire isn’t worth a second chance.

Oh  _God_  it hurts.


	4. preliminary gayeties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> or: the gremlin is really starting to show, there, buddy.

So as it turns out, the entire chapter – all sixteen and a half pages, per my French version on Kindle – is chock full of interaction between the brunch trio, Joly, Bossuet, and Grantaire. So we’re gonna do the whole thing, beginning to end.

Over six pages’ worth of it is one single monologue by the man himself.

This …. this is gonna be a wild ride.

The Hapgood English translation can be found [here](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.online-literature.com%2Fvictor_hugo%2Fles_miserables%2F278%2F&t=ODE2OTgzNDczZGI5NmJhMzk3NDY2N2YyZmIyY2I5YjgyNTVkZWVmNCxDd0t0dzFZMQ%3D%3D&b=t%3A-xgIwv6rQKKJyyQisSqL5Q&p=http%3A%2F%2Fparticolored-arts.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F181065209165%2Fgrantaire-is-in-love-with-enjolras-and-enjolras-is&m=0).

And off we go! 

> _Laigle de Meaux, as the reader knows, lived more with Joly than elsewhere. He had a lodging, as a bird has one on a branch. The two friends lived together, ate together, slept together. They had everything in common, even Musichetta, to some extent. They were, what the subordinate monks who accompany monks are called, bini. On the morning of the 5th of June, they went to Corinthe to breakfast. Joly, who was all stuffed up, had a catarrh which Laigle was beginning to share. Laigle’s coat was threadbare, but Joly was well dressed._
> 
> _It was about nine o'clock in the morning, when they opened the door of Corinthe._
> 
> _They ascended to the first floor._
> 
> _Matelote and Gibelotte received them._
> 
> _“Oysters, cheese, and ham,” said Laigle._
> 
> _And they seated themselves at a table._

Ok, first of all, breakfast of champions.

~~If this is your last proper breakfast before you die, might as well breakfast in style, right?~~  

> _The wine-shop was empty; there was no one there but themselves._
> 
> _Gibelotte, knowing Joly and Laigle, set a bottle of wine on the table._
> 
> _While they were busy with their first oysters, a head appeared at the hatchway of the staircase, and a voice said: –_
> 
> _“I am passing by. I smell from the street a delicious odor of Brie cheese. I enter.” It was Grantaire._

I like to annotate my Kindle editions of books, rather than scribbling in print editions, because it makes me feel better for some reason. I went to look at the note I had for this section, and this is what my original reaction was:

“good morning garbage boy date crasher [kissing emoji]”

… Well, that about covers it. Might as well stop the rest of the meta here.

(I kid. The train wreck is just getting started.) 

> _Grantaire took a stool and drew up to the table._
> 
> _At the sight of Grantaire, Gibelotte placed two bottles of wine on the table._
> 
> _That made three._
> 
> _“Are you going to drink those two bottles?” Laigle inquired of Grantaire._
> 
> _Grantaire replied: –_
> 
> _“All are ingenious, thou alone art ingenuous. Two bottles never yet astonished a man.”_

H … HONEY ……… IT’S NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING ………….

If we didn’t fully comprehend how much of an alcoholic Grantaire was before, now we see it in action, plain as ink. Joly and Bossuet share a single bottle of wine between them, but Grantaire is  _known by the waitstaff_  to consume two bottles by himself in one sitting.

(And here we are again with the inconsistent thou/you usage, Hapgood. These boys all tutoie each other. Bossuet isn’t calling Grantaire vous.) 

> _The others had begun by eating, Grantaire began by drinking. Half a bottle was rapidly gulped down._
> 
> _“So you have a hole in your stomach?” began Laigle again._
> 
> _“You have one in your elbow,” said Grantaire._

GRANTAIRE … I AM CONCERNED … AND SO ARE YOUR FRIENDS!

It really tickles me pink that of the three of them, Bossuet is the mom friend. He’s the one who first made friendly overtures to Marius, he’s the one who calmed down Grantaire from his tizzy in the Musain, he’s the one who inquires after Marius when seeing him behaving strangely (though Courfeyrac’s the one who says essentially “don’t follow him you ninny can’t you see he’s busy”), and now he is the one who’s expressing if not concern then at least pointed observation about Grantaire’s drinking habits.

Grantaire responds to this pointed remark with a quick riposte about Bossuet’s threadbare coat. He seems to be in less than a good mood.

(Can’t imagine why …)

> _And after having emptied his glass, he added: –_
> 
> _“Ah, by the way, Laigle of the funeral oration, your coat is old.”_
> 
> _“I should hope so,” retorted Laigle. “That’s why we get on well together, my coat and I. It has acquired all my folds, it does not bind me anywhere, it is moulded on my deformities, it falls in with all my movements, I am only conscious of it because it keeps me warm. Old coats are just like old friends.”_
> 
> _“That’s true,” ejaculated Joly, striking into the dialogue, “an old goat is an old abi” (ami, friend)._
> 
> _“Especially in the mouth of a man whose head is stuffed up,” said Grantaire._

I love this little passage, in part because of the pun (habit, coat, and abi/ami, friend), but mostly because of the comparison. Old coats are just like old friends – and we can see this in the way that these three fellas interact with each other. They get along. They don’t restrict each other, they are accustomed to each others’ idiosyncrasies, they move in concert, and their presence is warmth and comfort.

You know that picture of Kermit the Frog holding a photograph and there are little heart emojis all over the place? That’s me right now.

(I just … wish … that Hapgood had chosen a different uh, translation for “s’écria Joly entrant dans le dialogue” than the one she did. I would have, uh. Said something else. “Cried,” perhaps. … Oh no. Oh God. Not that. Uh. “Shouted”? Yeah. Shouted is better.)

> _“Grantaire,” demanded Laigle, “have you just come from the boulevard?”_
> 
> _“No.”_
> 
> _“We have just seen the head of the procession pass, Joly and I.”_
> 
> _“It’s a marvellous sight,” said Joly._
> 
> _“How quiet this street is!” exclaimed Laigle. “Who would suspect that Paris was turned upside down? How plainly it is to be seen that in former days there were nothing but convents here! In this neighborhood! Du Breul and Sauval give a list of them, and so does the Abbe Lebeuf. They were all round here, they fairly swarmed, booted and barefooted, shaven, bearded, gray, black, white, Franciscans, Minims, Capuchins, Carmelites, Little Augustines, Great Augustines, old Augustines – there was no end of them.”_
> 
> _“Don’t let’s talk of monks,” interrupted Grantaire, “it makes one want to scratch one’s self.”_

I suspected there would be a pun here. And I did some digging. And I was sort of right.

“Gratter”, to scratch, was slang for any number of things at the time, some of them quite inappropriate. But “ _se_  gratter” was slang for “rien recevoir,” or “se taper” – receiving nothing – specifically, receiving nothing to eat. This isn’t a pun exactly, but it is a euphemism: Hapgood uses a literal translation where an ethnographic translation would make more sense.

In short: talking of monks makes Grantaire cease to be hungry. Even in the presence of oysters and Brie.

My boy is  _really_  in a grumpy mood this morning.

> _Then he exclaimed: –_
> 
> _“Bouh! I’ve just swallowed a bad oyster. Now hypochondria is taking possession of me again. The oysters are spoiled, the servants are ugly. I hate the human race. I just passed through the Rue Richelieu, in front of the big public library. That pile of oyster-shells which is called a library is disgusting even to think of. What paper! What ink! What scrawling! And all that has been written! What rascal was it who said that man was a featherless biped?[51]_
> 
> _[51] Bipede sans plume: biped without feathers – pen._

This is just a temper tantrum at the moment, even including the pun. He doesn’t have a goal to his ramble yet; he’s just begun; he isn’t yet trying to make a point. But hold on, because he’s about to swivel to an extremely specific target.

> _And then, I met a pretty girl of my acquaintance, who is as beautiful as the spring, worthy to be called Floreal, and who is delighted, enraptured, as happy as the angels, because a wretch yesterday, a frightful banker all spotted with small-pox, deigned to take a fancy to her! Alas! woman keeps on the watch for a protector as much as for a lover; cats chase mice as well as birds._

Grantaire knows this girl, but doesn’t provide her name. While he speaks of a specific grisette of his acquaintance, Hugo uses this opportunity to speak of another young lady who was a grisette, worthy to be called Floréal.

Floréal: the eighth month of the French Republican calendar: mid April to mid May: spring.

Is there any other lady, a grisette in Paris, young, beautiful, worthy to be called springtime itself, recently come into the acquaintance of a rich man, whom we know?

Grantaire speaks of a girl that he knows. Hugo speaks of Fantine.

(Clio, are you gonna bring up Fantine in every single meta post you possibly can? YES, I AM. WATCH ME. AND IT WILL MAKE SENSE TOO, BY GOD.)

This girl (Fantine) is delighted, enraptured, because a rich man has deigned to take a fancy to her. Grantaire uses this verb, “deigns,” which is a direct cognate to the French – and this verb is painfully accurate.

To deign: to do something that one considers to be beneath one’s dignity.

The rich man (Tholomyès) has decided that even though he probably shouldn’t, and though he might think better of it later, for now he will pay attention to this pretty working-class girl.

Notice that the banker is described as riddled with smallpox scars, and Tholomyès is described as balding and toothless. The girls are poor, but physically speaking they are way out of these guys’ leagues.

Grantaire laments: women seek protectors just as much as they seek lovers, and to a grisette, a rich man – while ugly – offers both societal and economic protection.

For the moment, anyway …

> _Two months ago that young woman was virtuous in an attic, she adjusted little brass rings in the eyelet-holes of corsets, what do you call it? She sewed, she had a camp bed, she dwelt beside a pot of flowers, she was contented. Now here she is a bankeress. This transformation took place last night. I met the victim this morning in high spirits. The hideous point about it is, that the jade is as pretty to-day as she was yesterday. Her financier did not show in her face. Roses have this advantage or disadvantage over women, that the traces left upon them by caterpillars are visible._

Two months ago the girl (Fantine) earned her living through piecework. She had a modest little flat, she took joy in flowers, and she was content with her lot in life.

Now here she is a bankeress.

There are metas on the Barrière du Maine ; there are metas on Floréal. Some people interpret the term “bankeress” as the girl having married the rich man, and some people interpret it as the girl having slept with him, and some interpret it as her simply having met with him and gone on a date or two.

I don’t think the girl is married to the banker. I think she’s agreed to become his mistress. Why? Because of the rest of what Grantaire says.

Now – is it gross of Grantaire to call her a jade (a promiscuous woman) because she agreed to align herself with a rich man? Yeah. Yeah it is. (I call him my  _garbage_  son for a reason.) But that is so very much not the point of this little story.

She is just as pretty today as she was yesterday, when she had not yet agreed. There was no physical transformation after the agreement. This, Grantaire feels, is a bad thing.

Why should there be transformation? Hugo has already told us why, with Fantine.

Floréal (Fantine) becomes the banker’s (Tholomyès’) mistress. He spoils her with pretty dresses, with nights out at the theater and the opera, concerts, long walks in the gardens in the middle of the afternoon, picnics, luxurious food, maybe even a new expensive apartment near his. He calls on her at any time, he takes her dancing, he shows her off to his rich friends.

And she stops her piecework, because her lover is taking care of her now. And she becomes accustomed to a level of richesse and idleness that, perhaps, she had only ever seen before in shop windows or on passersby in the street.

And if (when) her lover grows tired of her, he leaves her no money. He takes back the apartment, leaving her to scramble for a new place to live, as she had vacated her old flat.

And her time, which first was taken up with work and then was taken up with him, is now a vast empty gulf.

So she must struggle to become accustomed to work again, to say nothing of finding new work after such a lapse.

And that’s the best case scenario for young ma’amzelle Floréal. Fantine was left with a child out of wedlock, in addition to the above.

Is Grantaire entirely cognizant of the tragedy that hovers, like an anvil, waiting to strike poor Floréal to the earth? No, probably not, at least not all of it. But he is a former student, with access to some money, and so plenty of his classmates (if none of his friends; I hope to GOD none of his friends) have probably done the exact same thing that Tholomyès did, that this banker is planning to do.

To quote the song “Some Girls” from the wonderful show  _Once on this Island_ :

Some girls you marry. Some you love.

Grantaire may not be aware of all the implications, but he knows that this man is going to drop this girl in the dust, and she will be worse off for it. 

> _Ah! there is no morality on earth. I call to witness the myrtle, the symbol of love, the laurel, the symbol of air, the olive, that ninny, the symbol of peace, the apple-tree which came nearest rangling Adam with its pips, and the fig-tree, the grandfather of petticoats._

Not much substance here. But we’ve got a weird translation error, a fun bit of argot, a strange but cool translation, and a damn good joke. So let’s concentrate on those for a second, because gawd this has been depressing so far and it’s gonna get depressing again in a minute.

First up: in French, it’s “le laurier, symbole de la  _guerre_ ”. Symbol of  _war_ , not air. How the hell do you get air out of war??

I went and found my print edition of Hapgood to check to see if it was just a transcription typo from putting it online. Nope. It’s a rulio trulio translation error. I … I can’t see what else it could be.

Next up: “l’olivier, ce bêta, symbole de la paix”. Bêta in modern French means beta, as in the Greek letter of the alphabet. But in old argot, it means crétin, niais. Simpleton, thickhead, blockhead.

(The mental image of Grantaire as Lucy from Peanuts just occurred to me. And you know what, I can easily imagine Grantaire telling Bossuet that he’s for sure gonna let him actually kick the football this time.)

Then: “the apple-tree which came nearest rangling Adam with its pips”. the French just has it as “the apple which failed to strangle Adam”, so at first I thought “came nearest rangling” was another error. But oh man is it not, and oh man is it such a cool mental image.

“Rangle” is a real english word! It is a falconry term for small bits of gravel, fed to hawks to aid in their digestion. So while Grantaire refers to the apple as that which nearly killed Adam (and thus humanity) but didn’t, Hapgood refers to the apple as that which came closest to aiding in Adam’s (and thus humanity’s) digestion. And wow isn’t that an interesting theological implication!

And last before crud gets real again: “le figuier, grand-père des jupons.” The fig, grandfather of petticoats or slips. I’m just … kinda cackling over here.

I love my garbage son.

> _As for right, do you know what right is? The Gauls covet Clusium, Rome protects Clusium, and demands what wrong Clusium has done to them. Brennus answers: ‘The wrong that Alba did to you, the wrong that Fidenae did to you, the wrong that the Eques, the Volsci, and the Sabines have done to you. They were your neighbors. The Clusians are ours. We understand neighborliness just as you do. You have stolen Alba, we shall take Clusium.’ Rome said: ‘You shall not take Clusium.’ Brennus took Rome. Then he cried: ‘Vae victis!’ That is what right is. Ah! what beasts of prey there are in this world! What eagles! It makes my flesh creep.”_

This is pretty clear-cut; no need to go digging for references. Grantaire translates himself for us.

Two things here.

“Vae victis!” -> “woe to the vanquished!”. This is a Latin phrase which apparently implies that those who are conquered are entirely at the mercy of their conquerors, but should not expect to be given any quarter whatsoever.

“What eagles!” -> a blatant reference to Napoleon, who as we know had some imperial tendencies himself.

History repeats itself, brutally.

> _He held out his glass to Joly, who filled it, then he drank and went on, having hardly been interrupted by this glass of wine, of which no one, not even himself, had taken any notice: –_

JOLY DON’T FUCKING ENCOURAGE HIM.

> _“Brennus, who takes Rome, is an eagle; the banker who takes the grisette is an eagle. There is no more modesty in the one case than in the other. So we believe in nothing. There is but one reality: drink. Whatever your opinion may be in favor of the lean cock, like the Canton of Uri, or in favor of the fat cock, like the Canton of Glaris, it matters little, drink._

Brennus conquers Rome, and let Rome expect no mercy from Brennus. The banker conquers the grisette, and let the grisette expect no mercy from the banker.

The microcosm of brutality is Tholomyès’ conquest of Fantine. The macrocosm is the whole of human history.

(And .. the word in French is “coq,” as in rooster. As in chicken. R isn’t deliberately being obscene here. The obscenity of human misery is bad enough.)

> _You talk to me of the boulevard, of that procession, et caetera, et caetera. Come now, is there going to be another revolution? This poverty of means on the part of the good God astounds me. He has to keep greasing the groove of events every moment. There is a hitch, it won’t work. Quick, a revolution!_

“Another revolution?” he says, as if he didn’t know his friends were planning it. And yet the weariness is entirely justified, I think. It’s only two years ago that they had the Three Glorious Days and upset Charles X. Can’t there be a little more peace and quiet before turning everything upside down again? And anyway, how much did that change things?

Well, things did change a little. And with the June rebellion of 1832, things will change a little again. But … yeah. Sorry. Not enough. Not yet.

Grantaire’s little conceit here of revolution by human hands being God’s way of fixing his machine is sad, but also feels familiar to me despite my not having read this passage since – well, since summer of 2011 when I first cracked open the Norman Denny translation in my local library. (I know, i know,  _Denny_. Scream in horror with me.)

I remember back in 2011-2012 on the Les Mis message boards there was a habit among some of the people there to refer to God as the Watchmaker – per the Deist analogy about the universe being a made and abandoned watch on a beach. There’s a similar feeling here. Grantaire might believe in a higher power, but he doesn’t think much of his handle on the goings-on down below.

> _The good God has his hands perpetually black with that cart-grease. If I were in his place, I’d be perfectly simple about it, I would not wind up my mechanism every minute, I’d lead the human race in a straightforward way, I’d weave matters mesh by mesh, without breaking the thread, I would have no provisional arrangements, I would have no extraordinary repertory._

If he had made the world, there would be no need for revolutions.

… Oh, honey.

> _What the rest of you call progress advances by means of two motors, men and events. But, sad to say, from time to time, the exceptional becomes necessary. The ordinary troupe suffices neither for event nor for men: among men geniuses are required, among events revolutions. Great accidents are the law; the order of things cannot do without them; and, judging from the apparition of comets, one would be tempted to think that Heaven itself finds actors needed for its performance._

Enjolras, an actor, an extraordinary man, a genius needed for heaven’s performance of the great event: revolution.

And here we come to comets – one of the most poetic things Grantaire has said so far in the book.

> _At the moment when one expects it the least, God placards a meteor on the wall of the firmament. Some queer star turns up, underlined by an enormous tail. And that causes the death of Caesar. Brutus deals him a blow with a knife, and God a blow with a comet. Crac, and behold an aurora borealis, behold a revolution, behold a great man; ‘93 in big letters, Napoleon on guard, the comet of 1811 at the head of the poster. Ah! what a beautiful blue theatre all studded with unexpected flashes! Boum! Boum! extraordinary show! Raise your eyes, boobies. Everything is in disorder, the star as well as the drama. Good God, it is too much and not enough._

I feel like if I was familiar with  _Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812_  then I would be able to add more cogent commentary at this point. As it is, all I can do is point to the onomatopoeia and the sudden descriptive nature of Grantaire’s speech. He really is waxing a bit rhapsodic here.

“What a beautiful blue theatre all studded with unexpected flashes! Boum! Boum! extraordinary show!”

If Grantaire could exist in the here and now, and see a production of the Les Mis musical, no doubt he would alternate between laughing and crying so much that one could hardly distinguish between the two actions.

It is too much and not enough.

> _These resources, gathered from exception, seem magnificence and poverty. My friends, Providence has come down to expedients. What does a revolution prove? That God is in a quandry. He effects a coup d’etat because he, God, has not been able to make both ends meet. In fact, this confirms me in my conjectures as to Jehovah’s fortune; and when I see so much distress in heaven and on earth, from the bird who has not a grain of millet to myself without a hundred thousand livres of income, when I see human destiny, which is very badly worn, and even royal destiny, which is threadbare, witness the Prince de Conde hung, when I see winter, which is nothing but a rent in the zenith through which the wind blows, when I see so many rags even in the perfectly new purple of the morning on the crests of hills, when I see the drops of dew, those mock pearls, when I see the frost, that paste, when I see humanity ripped apart and events patched up, and so many spots on the sun and so many holes in the moon, when I see so much misery everywhere, I suspect that God is not rich. The appearance exists, it is true, but I feel that he is hard up. He gives a revolution as a tradesman whose money-box is empty gives a ball._

OH GOD, NO, HE HURTS, AND IT HURTS ME TO SEE HIM HURT.

Look at this pretty prose and the way it devolves.  _The perfectly new purple of the morning on the crests of hills_.  _Drops of dew, those mock pearls_.  _Humanity ripped apart and events patched up_.

He sees the beauty of the physical world, and he sees the misery of humanity, and he thinks: how can God be all-powerful, all-knowing, all-kind, when  _this_  exists? And then he comes to the conclusion that God creates revolutions – or hosts them, as a tradesman hosts a party – with the same frantic half-hearted effort of someone trying to pretend everything is just fine, when everything very clearly is not.

> _God must not be judged from appearances. Beneath the gilding of heaven I perceive a poverty-stricken universe. Creation is bankrupt. That is why I am discontented._

:’(

> _Here it is the 4th of June, it is almost night; ever since this morning I have been waiting for daylight to come; it has not come, and I bet that it won’t come all day. This is the inexactness of an ill-paid clerk._

In French it’s the fifth of June ; I had hoped this was a typo on behalf of the online uploader, but nope, it’s another translation error ; my buddy R isn’t quite so far gone as to confuse the dates …

But onto the meat of the sentence. “Ever since this morning I have been waiting for daylight to come; it has not come, and I bet that it won’t come all day.”

Red, a world about to dawn. Black, the night that ends at last.

Grantaire has been waiting for the new world to dawn. Maybe he hasn’t been conscious of it, but that is, in his heart of hearts, what he wants – as we’ve just seen. He is weary of, disgusted with, saddened by the misery of the world as it is now. He wants things to change.

But he has been waiting for the new world to dawn; and it has not dawned, and he bets that it won’t dawn all day.

This day: June fifth: the day the barricade rises.

This barricade will not end the night.

> _Yes, everything is badly arranged, nothing fits anything else, this old world is all warped, I take my stand on the opposition, everything goes awry; the universe is a tease. It’s like children, those who want them have none, and those who don’t want them have them. Total: I’m vexed._

And we have a brief savage jab from Hugo at the Thénardiers, who sell their children literally – in multiple ways.

“Je bisque.” -> “I am furious.”

WELL AFTER THIS WHOLE BIT, MEDITATING ON THE HORROR OF THE WORLD, WHO WOULDN’T BE?

> _Besides, Laigle de Meaux, that bald-head, offends my sight. It humiliates me to think that I am of the same age as that baldy. However, I criticise, but I do not insult. The universe is what it is. I speak here without evil intent and to ease my conscience. Receive, Eternal Father, the assurance of my distinguished consideration._

This bit puzzles me; it feels like a non sequitur at this point. But at the same time, Grantaire has just finished his big argument. He isn’t trying to prove anything anymore. I kind of imagine him pausing (briefly) for breath, or for a top-up for his glass, and then focusing his attention on Bossuet and starting off again.

If my garbage son did paragraph breaks, this would be one of them, I think.

He’s uh, saying that he doesn’t insult, but just before that he says that Bossuet offends his sight. Honey. No. That … that counts as an insult.

Reminds me of those “hey I’m not mean I’m just being honest” folks. Makes me want to punch em in the throat.

Hey, just being honest.

> _Ah! by all the saints of Olympus and by all the gods of paradise, I was not intended to be a Parisian, that is to say, to rebound forever, like a shuttlecock between two battledores, from the group of the loungers to the group of the roysterers. I was made to be a Turk, watching oriental houris all day long, executing those exquisite Egyptian dances, as sensuous as the dream of a chaste man, or a Beauceron peasant, or a Venetian gentleman surrounded by gentlewoman, or a petty German prince, furnishing the half of a foot-soldier to the Germanic confederation, and occupying his leisure with drying his breeches on his hedge, that is to say, his frontier. Those are the positions for which I was born! Yes, I have said a Turk, and I will not retract. I do not understand how people can habitually take Turks in bad part; Mohammed had his good points; respect for the inventor of seraglios with houris and paradises with odalisques! Let us not insult Mohammedanism, the only religion which is ornamented with a hen-roost!_

_Hoo_ , there’s a lot to unpack there. Okay.

Grantaire doesn’t want to be a Parisian. At this point in French history, uh, who does? But this is from the same guy who said, in the café Musain four years ago (when he was young and unafraid) that Paris carried the day, that “Diogenes would have loved to be a rag-picker of the place Maubert better than to be a philosopher at the Piraeus.”

Though four years ago, in 1828, the argument with Charles X hadn’t happened yet; barricades were not looming again on the horizon. Being a Parisian was a little less stressful four years ago.

So he doesn’t want to be in Paris anymore. He wants to be in Constantinople, watching pretty virgin girls dancing. He wants to be in the north of France, maybe breeding dogs (the Beauceron dog being a sort of floppy-eared German shepherd look-alike). He wants to be in Venice, entertaining a salon of pretty girls and pretty boys, discussing the arts. He wants to be a German princeling, adding his rabble of foot-soldiers to a distant war and then spending his free time airing out his feet in his spacious backyard.

There’s enough variety in the examples he gives that there’s only one theme to be drawn from it that I can see – he wants to be away from here, thinking about other things. Possibly not even thinking at all.

Then he comes back to Islam and, er, is rather sacrilegious about it all. But then again, this is the same guy who said of the crucifix, “there is a gibbet which has been a success.” He doesn’t care what religion it is, he’s gonna treat it irreverently.

> _Now, I insist on a drink. The earth is a great piece of stupidity. And it appears that they are going to fight, all those imbeciles, and to break each other’s profiles and to massacre each other in the heart of summer, in the month of June, when they might go off with a creature on their arm, to breathe the immense heaps of new-mown hay in the meadows! Really, people do commit altogether too many follies. An old broken lantern which I have just seen at a bric-a-brac merchant’s suggests a reflection to my mind; it is time to enlighten the human race. Yes, behold me sad again. That’s what comes of swallowing an oyster and a revolution the wrong way! I am growing melancholy once more. Oh! frightful old world. People strive, turn each other out, prostitute themselves, kill each other, and get used to it!”_

Grantaire had made his point, but now he finally comes to the real reason why he is upset. All of his friends, whom he loves dearly, are going to and get themselves killed – when instead they could be looking at the perfectly new purple of the morning on the crests of hills, or watching the beautiful blue theater’s flashes from a distance, and most importantly, being alive to see it.

He has studied history. He knows what comes next. He knows that they are all going to die. And he knows that they are giving their lives away to martyrdom gladly.

And he’s angry, and he’s bitter, and he’s  _sad_.

> _And Grantaire, after this fit of eloquence, had a fit of coughing, which was well earned._

You said it, not me.

> _“A propos of revolution,” said Joly, “it is decidedly abberent that Barius is in lub.”_
> 
> _“Does any one know with whom?” demanded Laigle._
> 
> _“Do.”_
> 
> _“No?”_
> 
> _“Do! I tell you.”_
> 
> _“Marius’ love affairs!” exclaimed Grantaire. “I can imagine it. Marius is a fog, and he must have found a vapor. Marius is of the race of poets. He who says poet, says fool, madman, Tymbraeus Apollo. Marius and his Marie, or his Marion, or his Maria, or his Mariette. They must make a queer pair of lovers. I know just what it is like. Ecstasies in which they forget to kiss. Pure on earth, but joined in heaven. They are souls possessed of senses. They lie among the stars.”_

THE ….. MOST POETIC FUCKING THING ……..

This is the other quote that people pull out for their e/R shippy stuff, and boy oh boy I cannot blame them. What a quote.

I do have to say that “ecstasies in which they forget to kiss” made me howl with laughter though, because that is exactly how Marius and Cosette spent their first few hours in close proximity. Just staring into each other’s eyes, murmuring the occasional word, sitting on a bench, not even touching. Priceless. They’re pining for each other even when they know their love is requited.

“I know just what it is like.” Yeah, honey, I bet you do.

… Oh no. I made myself sad about Grantaire again. Damn it.

> _Grantaire was attacking his second bottle and, possibly, his second harangue,_

NO –

> _when a new personage emerged from the square aperture of the stairs._

– thank gawd. Someone interrupted him.

> _It was a boy less than ten years of age, ragged, very small, yellow, with an odd phiz, a vivacious eye, an enormous amount of hair drenched with rain, and wearing a contented air._
> 
> _The child unhesitatingly making his choice among the three, addressed himself to Laigle de Meaux._
> 
> _“Are you Monsieur Bossuet?”_
> 
> _“That is my nickname,” replied Laigle. “What do you want with me?”_
> 
> _“This. A tall blonde fellow on the boulevard said to me: ‘Do you know Mother Hucheloup?’ I said: ‘Yes, Rue Chanvrerie, the old man’s widow;’ he said to me: ‘Go there. There you will find M. Bossuet. Tell him from me: “A B C”.’ It’s a joke that they’re playing on you, isn’t it. He gave me ten sous.”_
> 
> _“Joly, lend me ten sous,” said Laigle; and, turning to Grantaire: “Grantaire, lend me ten sous.”_
> 
> _This made twenty sous, which Laigle handed to the lad._
> 
> _“Thank you, sir,” said the urchin._
> 
> _“What is your name?” inquired Laigle._
> 
> _“Navet, Gavroche’s friend.”_
> 
> _“Stay with us,” said Laigle._
> 
> _“Breakfast with us,” said Grantaire._
> 
> _The child replied: –_
> 
> _“I can’t, I belong in the procession, I’m the one to shout ‘Down with Polignac!’”_
> 
> _And executing a prolonged scrape of his foot behind him, which is the most respectful of all possible salutes, he took his departure._

I’M UHHH CRYING? I LOVE THEM ALL SO MUCH.

I don’t have anything witty to add. I just love my disaster brunch trio. 

> _The child gone, Grantaire took the word: –_
> 
> _“That is the pure-bred gamin. There are a great many varieties of the gamin species. The notary’s gamin is called Skip-the-Gutter, the cook’s gamin is called a scullion, the baker’s gamin is called a mitron, the lackey’s gamin is called a groom, the marine gamin is called the cabin-boy, the soldier’s gamin is called the drummer-boy, the painter’s gamin is called paint-grinder, the tradesman’s gamin is called an errand-boy, the courtesan gamin is called the minion, the kingly gamin is called the dauphin, the god gamin is called the bambino.”_
> 
> _In the meantime, Laigle was engaged in reflection;_

Yeah, honestly, I’m with you there, Bossuet. R is just nattering nonsense at this point. Though, like his little tongue-twister in the Musain speech, this bit is definitely more impressive in French than in English. For one thing, it rhymes a hell of a lot more.

> _he said half aloud: –_
> 
> _“A B C, that is to say: the burial of Lamarque.”_
> 
> _“The tall blonde,” remarked Grantaire, “is Enjolras, who is sending you a warning.”_
> 
> _“Shall we go?” ejaculated Bossuet._

_CEASE THIS !!_

> _“It’s raiding,” said Joly. “I have sworn to go through fire, but not through water. I don’t wand to ged a gold.”_
> 
> _“I shall stay here,” said Grantaire. “I prefer a breakfast to a hearse.”_
> 
> _“Conclusion: we remain,” said Laigle. “Well, then, let us drink. Besides, we might miss the funeral without missing the riot.”_

I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. MY BOYS.

And I love. I  _love_  that Hugo decided to remind us, over and over with the orthography of Joly’s speech, that he has a head cold. Head colds are like death warmed over, but gawd it’s adorable to hear Joly speak with his nose stuffed up.

> _“Ah! the riot, I am with you!” cried Joly._
> 
> _Laigle rubbed his hands._
> 
> _“Now we’re going to touch up the revolution of 1830. As a matter of fact, it does hurt the people along the seams.”_
> 
> _“I don’t think much of your revolution,” said Grantaire. “I don’t execrate this Government. It is the crown tempered by the cotton night-cap. It is a sceptre ending in an umbrella. In fact, I think that to-day, with the present weather, Louis Philippe might utilize his royalty in two directions, he might extend the tip of the sceptre end against the people, and open the umbrella end against heaven.”_

WHY DID YOU … SAY THAT … TO THEIR FACES …

Puts head in hands.

This kind of talk is why Enjolras was so surprised that you volunteered for the Barrière du Maine, honey.

(And I love Bossuet’s turn of phrase there, about touching up the revolution of 1830. That’s just … guh. He has such a way with words. I love him so much.)

> _The room was dark, large clouds had just finished the extinction of daylight. There was no one in the wine-shop, or in the street, every one having gone off “to watch events.”_
> 
> _“Is it mid-day or midnight?” cried Bossuet. “You can’t see your hand before your face. Gibelotte, fetch a light.”_
> 
> _Grantaire was drinking in a melancholy way._

As he …. has been doing the whole morning …….

But Bossuet is trying to cheer him up. Mom mode activated. God bless.

> _“Enjolras disdains me,” he muttered. “Enjolras said: ‘Joly is ill, Grantaire is drunk.’ It was to Bossuet that he sent Navet. If he had come for me, I would have followed him. So much the worse for Enjolras! I won’t go to his funeral.”_

Well …. he was right, wasn’t he? Joly is ill, and Grantaire is drunk. And Bossuet is the mom friend, anyway. For all that he’s the unlucky one, he’s also the responsible one.

But the phrase “if he had come for me, I would have followed him” is all the more painful after the Barrière du Maine sequence. Enjolras saw a singular moment of failure and decided not to give Grantaire a second chance. He stands at a height – Grantaire stands at a depth – and Grantaire reaches up to him once, and falls, and Enjolras walks away.

What if Enjolras had ever tried to help him up? What would have happened then?

And oh God, the dramatic irony of “I won’t go to his funeral” is breathtaking.

> _This resolution once arrived at, Bossuet, Joly, and Grantaire did not stir from the wine-shop. By two o'clock in the afternoon, the table at which they sat was covered with empty bottles. Two candles were burning on it, one in a flat copper candlestick which was perfectly green, the other in the neck of a cracked carafe. Grantaire had seduced Joly and Bossuet to wine; Bossuet and Joly had conducted Grantaire back towards cheerfulness._

I’M NOT CRYING, YOU’RE CRYING.

THEY LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH.

> _As for Grantaire, he had got beyond wine, that merely moderate inspirer of dreams, ever since mid-day._

Oh PLEASE tell me they didn’t break out the absinthe.

> _Wine enjoys only a conventional popularity with serious drinkers. There is, in fact, in the matter of inebriety, white magic and black magic; wine is only white magic. Grantaire was a daring drinker of dreams. The blackness of a terrible fit of drunkenness yawning before him, far from arresting him, attracted him. He had abandoned the bottle and taken to the beerglass. The beer-glass is the abyss._

Aw fuck. Oh no. Nooooo.

> _Having neither opium nor hashish on hand, and being desirous of filling his brain with twilight, he had had recourse to that fearful mixture of brandy, stout, absinthe, which produces the most terrible of lethargies. It is of these three vapors, beer, brandy, and absinthe, that the lead of the soul is composed. They are three grooms; the celestial butterfly is drowned in them; and there are formed there in a membranous smoke, vaguely condensed into the wing of the bat, three mute furies, Nightmare, Night, and Death, which hover about the slumbering Psyche._

N O O OOOOOOOOOO STOP IT OH GOD.

NO THIS IS SO MUCH WORSE.

Okay. OKAY. Since it seems that Victor Hugo is intent on breaking into my house and smashing all of my dishes while maintaining perfect eye contact just to ruin my day, personally, let’s go through this Psyche comparison.

Psyche, a beautiful mortal but a mere mortal all the same, falls in love with Cupid, a pure perfect god.

(Already you can see why I am in a bad mood about this.)

The events of the marriage and the invisibility et cetera don’t really apply here, so we’ll skip past her accidentally waking Cupid and most of her trials by Aphrodite to win Cupid back, and we’ll skip to her last trial.

Psyche is tasked with retrieving a box of Persephone’s beauty to give to Aphrodite. Psyche returns from the underworld with this box, but she is curious, so she opens the box and some Stygian vapors emerge from it, which become a fugue, which bespell Psyche into a death-like sleep.

Sound Familiar?

Cupid wakes Psyche from her death-like sleep, and they go to Mount Olympus, the home of the gods.

Sound Familiar??

And it is there, at the home of the gods, that Psyche eats of ambrosia and becomes a goddess: becomes Cupid’s equal at last.

I’m Going To Tear My Hair Out.

Hugo has just spelled out “Orestes fasting and Pylades drunk” for us. Whole friggin’ chapters ahead of time.

Hey, Sabrina, which dotted line do I sign on so that the dark lord Satan will give me dread powers of awful necromancy or whatever? I want to resurrect Victor Hugo’s moldy corpse just so I can  _sock him in the jaw_.

> _Grantaire had not yet reached that lamentable phase; far from it. He was tremendously gay, and Bossuet and Joly retorted. They clinked glasses._

I’ve always imagined Joly of medium height and slim build, and Bossuet of tall and lanky build, versus a shorter and stockier Grantaire (who as we all know from part one, “A group which barely missed being historic”, is also fcking shredded on account of singlesticks). but Joly and Bossuet keep up with Grantaire, even if they aren’t drinking quite as much as he is.

> _Grantaire added to the eccentric accentuation of words and ideas, a peculiarity of gesture; he rested his left fist on his knee with dignity, his arm forming a right angle, and, with cravat untied, seated astride a stool, his full glass in his right hand, he hurled solemn words at the big maid-servant Matelote: –_
> 
> _“Let the doors of the palace be thrown open! Let every one be a member of the French Academy and have the right to embrace Madame Hucheloup. Let us drink.”_
> 
> _And turning to Madame Hucheloup, he added: –_
> 
> _“Woman ancient and consecrated by use, draw near that I may contemplate thee!”_
> 
> _And Joly exclaimed: –_
> 
> _“Matelote and Gibelotte, dod’t gib Grantaire anything more to drink. He has already devoured, since this bording, in wild prodigality, two francs and ninety-five centibes.”_

Puts head in hands.

It’s two o’clock in the afternoon. Y’all started at nine. It’s been a five hour solid drinking marathon and you’re only stopping him  _now?_

> _And Grantaire began again: –_
> 
> _“Who has been unhooking the stars without my permission, and putting them on the table in the guise of candles?”_
> 
> _Bossuet, though very drunk, preserved his equanimity._
> 
> _He was seated on the sill of the open window, wetting his back in the falling rain, and gazing at his two friends._

I fcking LOVE that quote.

Also, what an image. Marry me, Bossuet.

> _All at once, he heard a tumult behind him, hurried footsteps, cries of “To arms!” He turned round and saw in the Rue Saint-Denis, at the end of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, Enjolras passing, gun in hand, and Gavroche with his pistol, Feuilly with his sword, Courfeyrac with his sword, and Jean Prouvaire with his blunderbuss, Combeferre with his gun, Bahorel with his gun, and the whole armed and stormy rabble which was following them._

I’m gonna be pedantic and nitpicky about the type of swords that Feuilly and Courfeyrac have, because I’m me and y’all know I like stabby things.

Feuilly has “un sabre” – a sabre. Courfeyrac has “un épée” – the generic french term for a sword.

Sabres are one-handed, one-edged swords with a slight curve to them. Similar to the cutlass or cavalry sword.

An épée in the English refers to a thin, whippy, rapier-type blade, similar to the fencing foil but longer and less flexible. However, this is the French term we’re speaking of and frankly Courfeyrac is headed for combat – so what he’s got is probably closer to an arming sword, a double-edged one-handed sword, than a fencing épée.

This is the part where i obnoxiously refer back to Grantaire and singlesticks. If Grantaire wasn’t drunk off his gourd right now, he could be very useful in combat. My garbage son knows how to scrap! And fighting dirty, fighting brutally, would be much more useful at a barricade than the refinement of fencing!

These are not schoolboys who’ve never held a gun. But all the same, they are not trained for combat. They need all the help they can get.

> _The Rue de la Chanvrerie was not more than a gunshot long._

WOW, THANKS FOR THAT.

> _Bossuet improvised a speaking-trumpet from his two hands placed around his mouth, and shouted: –_
> 
> _“Courfeyrac! Courfeyrac! Hohee!”_
> 
> _Courfeyrac heard the shout, caught sight of Bossuet, and advanced a few paces into the Rue de la Chanvrerie, shouting: “What do you want?” which crossed a “Where are you going?”_
> 
> _“To make a barricade,” replied Courfeyrac._
> 
> _“Well, here! This is a good place! Make it here!”_
> 
> _“That’s true, Aigle,” said Courfeyrac._
> 
> _And at a signal from Courfeyrac, the mob flung themselves into the Rue de la Chanvrerie._

AAAAAND  _SCENE!_

Good God, that was a lot.

The next chapter picks up right where this one leaves off. We are in pre-barricade mode: after this next chapter, we are in full barricade mode: and that’s curtain on the Friends of the ABC.

This is fine.

This is fine!

…………….. This is not fine.


	5. night begins to descend upon grantaire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> or: this is the part where I start the wailing and the gnashing of teeth.

The relevant section is very short. Extremely short. Upsettingly short.

But that doesn’t matter much, because as Hugo tends to do, he makes his words count. Every single thing matters.

And I have lots of screaming to do.

This chapter (Hapgood translation found [here](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.online-literature.com%2Fvictor_hugo%2Fles_miserables%2F279%2F&t=NDZmNTQ0MTk5ZDMxNDE3NTNkOGQyYjJhNDBjZWI5ZDJkMWMyZDNhNyxwbUNrM3NGUg%3D%3D&b=t%3A-xgIwv6rQKKJyyQisSqL5Q&p=http%3A%2F%2Fparticolored-arts.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F181085593010%2Fgrantaire-is-in-love-with-enjolras-and-enjolras-is&m=0)) begins where the last one ends, with the rabble flinging itself into rue de la Chanvrerie and building the barricade. For the revolutionaries, the world is about to be set on its correct axis; for everyone else, the world is turning upside down.

Take a moment to reflect on Mother Hucheloup.

I’ve mentioned, with some analysis of Fantine, that she is born of the mess and chaos post-‘93, and that she grows up during the Napoleonic wars, and she sees the Bourbon Restoration; and that should she survive to 1832, she would be understandably hesitant about yet another set of barricades.

Mother Hucheloup is a widow. Probably old enough to be these young men’s grandmother. She hasn’t just seen the Napoleonic wars, she’s seen  _everything_ , and she was old enough to understand it as she saw it.

To her, young men building barricades means fire and smoke in the air, and blood in the streets. To her, young men building barricades means the world turns and people die and and nothing very much changes.

Only here it is again, and this time right at her doorstep. Literally.

> _Mame Hucheloup, quite upset, had taken refuge in the first story._
> 
> _Her eyes were vague, and stared without seeing anything, and she cried in a low tone. Her terrified shrieks did not dare to emerge from her throat._
> 
> _“The end of the world has come,” she muttered._
> 
> _Joly deposited a kiss on Mame Hucheloup’s fat, red, wrinkled neck, and said to Grantaire: “My dear fellow, I have always regarded a woman’s neck as an infinitely delicate thing.”_
> 
> _But Grantaire attained to the highest regions of dithryamb. Matelote had mounted to the first floor once more, Grantaire seized her round her waist, and gave vent to long bursts of laughter at the window._

One of these young fellows kisses her neck, which seems not only affectionate but familiar; Joly’s probably done this before, considering he and Bossuet appear to be regulars at the Corinthe. Mother Hucheloup is frightened, and Joly is trying to console her a little. But he is one of the revolutionaries; he’s one of the ones bringing this hell to her doorstep.

And another of these young fellows has a similar look on the whole thing as she does, except … he is not just three sheets to the wind, he’s a whole damn laundromat caught in a tornado.

Which does not help in the slightest.

Especially since he has now grabbed Matelote – poor, sweet Matelote, who was just helping with the barricade – and decided to pour out another drunken blather, only this time directed at her.

> _“Matelote is homely!” he cried: “Matelote is of a dream of ugliness! Matelote is a chimaera. This is the secret of her birth: a Gothic Pygmalion, who was making gargoyles for cathedrals, fell in love with one of them, the most horrible, one fine morning. He besought Love to give it life, and this produced Matelote. Look at her, citizens! She has chromate-of-lead-colored hair, like Titian’s mistress, and she is a good girl. I guarantee that she will fight well. Every good girl contains a hero._

…….. You absolute goblin. You trash man. Stop harassing her. If nothing else, at least let go of her.

The term “chimaera” in French can be a reference to the Greek monster, the fire-breathing creature with a lion’s head, a goat’s head, and a serpent for a tail. But it can also mean something that you want but that is impossible to attain.

The term “gargoyle” is also ambiguous. Technically, gargoyle is the blanket term for any grotesque carved on a building with a waterspout. And what is a grotesque?

A grotesque – also called a chimera, would you look at that – is any fantastical or mythical creature used for decorative purposes in architecture.

So the kings of Notre Dame Cathedral, technically, are grotesques. Nymphs, dryads, and caryatids carved upon buildings are grotesques. Should a beautiful, severe, chaste carved marble cherubim be etched upon a building, he too would be a grotesque.

Matelote is ugly; she is a dream of ugliness; she is desired but unreachable; she is the creation of an artist, a beloved but terrible fantastic creature, and love itself; she is like Titian’s mistress with her brilliantly colored red hair.

She’s a good girl. She will fight well.

Here’s the problem: Grantaire isn’t really insulting her, I don’t think. But – he grabbed her around the waist, and he’s emitting long loud peals of laughter, and he’s drunk off his gourd, and he’s standing in the open window.

And while I can dissect his meaning from a comfortable chair, and take several minutes to perform that dissection, Matelote isn’t in that position. He’s just grabbed her and started talking. And she isn’t classically trained in art and architecture and mythology; she doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. All she knows is that he started out with “Matelote is ugly!”

So on the one hand, I feel for him. He’s emotionally compromised. But on the other hand, and this is the bigass fiddler crab hand, I want to slap him and tell him to let go of her immediately.

> _As for Mother Hucheloup, she’s an old warrior. Look at her moustaches! She inherited them from her husband. A hussar indeed! She will fight too. These two alone will strike terror to the heart of the banlieue._

Stoooooooop.

> _Comrades, we shall overthrow the government as true as there are fifteen intermediary acids between margaric acid and formic acid; however, that is a matter of perfect indifference to me._

“We”!

“ _We_ ” _??_

Wait !! No !! Stop !! Stop the fucking narrative !!!! Somebody do a record-scratch freeze frame here !!!!

Pretend Emperor Kuzco has just pulled out a big red marker and circled Grantaire’s face with bright red ink.

That’s me right now.

WHAT IS THIS “WE,” GRANTAIRE????

He doesn’t use “on,” the impersonal third person pronoun which can be used as a royal we. He uses “nous.” For the first time in over sixteen pages of blather and moroseness and snark, Grantaire has aligned himself specifically with the revolution. As truly as science exists, they shall overthrow the government, and Grantaire will be right there with them.

Not that it matters to him, though. ‘Course not.

> _Gentlemen, my father always detested me because I could not understand mathematics. I understand only love and liberty. I am Grantaire, the good fellow. Having never had any money, I never acquired the habit of it, and the result is that I have never lacked it; but, if I had been rich, there would have been no more poor people! You would have seen! Oh, if the kind hearts only had fat purses, how much better things would go! I picture myself Jesus Christ with Rothschild’s fortune! How much good he would do!_

Gaaaaaaaaah. I … There’s not much to say here that I haven’t already said. BUT STILL. I’m so upset.

> _Matelote, embrace me! You are voluptuous and timid! You have cheeks which invite the kiss of a sister, and lips which claim the kiss of a lover.”_

Oh  _God_ , I’m cringing. This is so bad. Please, honey, slap him. Do a Fantine and claw his face bloody. He needs to be snapped out of it.

> _“Hold your tongue, you cask!” said Courfeyrac._
> 
> _Grantaire retorted: –_
> 
> _“I am the capitoul[52] and the master of the floral games!”_
> 
> _[52] Municipal officer of Toulouse._

– And Courfeyrac tries to snap him out of it! Good man! But Grantaire is not to be deterred. His bad mood is too big to be punctured so easily.

This is a direct parallel to the scene at the Musain. Bossuet reached out a hand to gesture for Grantaire to calm down, and that only worked R up into a worse temper. Courfeyrac tells him to hold his tongue, and he responds with a brash, harsh pronouncement.

This is how it goes in the original French:

_Tais-toi, futaille !_  /  _Je suis capitoul et maître ès jeux floraux !_

_Shut up, wine barrel!_  / _I am capitoul and master in the Floral Games!_

Okay. Okay. This …. oh God. Alright.

The specific reference to the capitouls, the magistrates in Toulouse, is a big ole middle finger to Courfeyrac and the rest of the barricade, first of all. Because the revolution of 1789 apparently came down hard on those guys.

_Second_  of all. And this is worse, by far.

The Floral Games were poetry contests held in Toulouse, Barcelona, Basque country, and a few other places. Initially the contests in Toulouse were held to celebrate the Occitan language, to preserve the local cultural heritage of the Occitan troubadours. Among the winners over the years is one Pierre de Ronsard, one of the seminal poets of the sixteenth century.

Pierre de Ronsard’s final years were punctuated with the deaths of most of his closest friends.

> _Enjolras, who was standing on the crest of the barricade, gun in hand, raised his beautiful, austere face. Enjolras, as the reader knows, had something of the Spartan and of the Puritan in his composition. He would have perished at Thermopylae with Leonidas, and burned at Drogheda with Cromwell._

Drags hands across face.

Of course he would have died with Leonidas. Of course he would have besieged Drogheda with Cromwell. Of fucking course !!!

But that’s not the only thing to note here. The setting of this is something that Hugo isn’t dwelling on, for all that he’ll go into rhapsodies over a convent or a sewer. But the staging is particularly pretty, and I think it matters.

It is about two o’clock. Maybe two-thirty. The sky is pitch black; it’s still drizzling a bit, if not outright raining.

Grantaire is at the open window on the first floor (to Americans, the second floor) of the wine shop. Hugo’s forgotten Matelote at this point; she doesn’t enter into the rest of the chapter. So let’s say that when Courfeyrac told Grantaire to hold his tongue, Grantaire released the poor girl and she could go back to barricade construction.

Enjolras is standing at the peak of the barricade. They are some distance away from each other; but as Hugo mentioned in the previous chapter, the whole street is only as wide as a gunshot.

(After I die, I’m gonna ask St. Peter, “Hey, where is Victor Hugo?” and he is going to point me in that direction and then I am going to use my spectral fist to smack ole Victor in his spectral jaw. And I am going to say, “That’s for saying that the rue de la Chanvrerie is as wide as a gunshot, you horrible person.” And he’s going to say, “Really? That’s all?” And I am going to say “Absolutely not but that’s what I’m starting with.”)

Specifically, Hugo says the street is as wide as “une portée de carabine.” A carbine is a long firearm, but shorter than a musket or a rifle, and it can be used to shoot either long-arm or short-arm ammunition. So, let’s say the carbine he’s speaking of is shooting pistol ammunition, for the sake of simplicity.

The street is only about as long as it takes to walk from the front door of a house to the edge of a driveway, and Enjolras is at the halfway point.

So, as it were, they can see the whites of each other’s eyes.

It’s pitch black, it’s drizzling rain, they are equal to each other in elevation from the ground, they can see each others’ faces in the torchlight.

Does this remind anyone else of Cosette and Marius singing to each other from opposite sides of the stage during “One Day More,” or is it just me?

> _“Grantaire,” he shouted, “go get rid of the fumes of your wine somewhere else than here. This is the place for enthusiasm, not for drunkenness. Don’t disgrace the barricade!”_
> 
> _This angry speech produced a singular effect on Grantaire. One would have said that he had had a glass of cold water flung in his face. He seemed to be rendered suddenly sober._

NO!!!! NO!!!!!!!! DON’T DO THIS TO ME!!!!!!!!!

Bossuet tries to calm Grantaire down with a gesture – Courfeyrac tries to calm Grantaire down with an affectionate “shut up!” – it does not work.

Bossuet tries to calm Grantaire down with a kind but brusque command – Enjolras yells for Grantaire to go elsewhere and sleep off his drunkenness – and it works.

Bossuet’s calming of Grantaire resulted in Grantaire turning mellow, humming, quiet and unobtrusive. Enjolras’ calming of Grantaire – unintentional, as he seems fairly antagonistic at the moment – produces a similar and yet completely dissimilar effect.

> _He sat down, put his elbows on a table near the window, looked at Enjolras with indescribable gentleness, and said to him: –_
> 
> _“Let me sleep here.”_

“Indescribable gentleness”.

Grantaire has become quiet again. He is not mellow; to be mellow implies ease, calm, docility. Grantaire is not at ease here. He is not calm. But he  _has_  become gentle, and the term for “gentleness” in French is “douceur,” which can also be translated as “softness,” and is transliterated as “sweetness.”

He speaks to Enjolras with the soft, sweet gentleness of someone desperately in love. 

And he makes no more mention of revolution. Instead he mirrors back Enjolras’ command and turns it into a request.

He is happy to sleep off his drunkenness as Enjolras desires. He just wants to be close to Enjolras as he does so.

That gross sobbing that you hear in the background? That’s me.

> _“Go and sleep somewhere else,” cried Enjolras._
> 
> _But Grantaire, still keeping his tender and troubled eyes fixed on him, replied: –_
> 
> _“Let me sleep here, – until I die.”_

ST O P THSI SSSSS

Enjolras is so completely unaware of what has happened to Grantaire. After the Barrière du Maine, I think it’s not only likely but probable that Enjolras has decided to actively pay as little attention to Grantaire as possible. I love my ferocious golden son. But once people transgress in his eyes, he writes them off ruthlessly the same way that Javert does to criminals. And once he does so, he doesn’t consider them worth the effort of trying to bring them back into the fold.

Grantaire wants to be near to Enjolras. Enjolras is just wondering what the hell he’s still doing here. And in fact –

> _Enjolras regarded him with disdainful eyes: –_
> 
> _“Grantaire, you are incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, and of dying.”_

N OO O OO O. GOD. NO!!! IT HURTS!!!!

– This right here is why I cannot, I  _will_  not ship e/R as reciprocal. I’m so sorry. If you’ve come along this ride with me to dissect this ship and scream about its tragedy, that’s fine and dandy. But this is not a Romeo and Juliet tragedy where they are meant to be together, despite the fact that both pairs die too soon, and both pairs die together.

This is the tragedy of someone in the abyss in love with someone in the clouds, reaching up, stumbling and falling in the attempt. This is the tragedy of the clouds dissolving under the other person’s feet, so he crashes to the earth, bereft of everything he knew.

And this is the tragedy of that person in the abyss reaching up, and the person of the clouds finally reaching down, and before they can even  _begin_  to understand each other as equals, they die.

I cannot stress it enough. From the moment we first see them in 1828 until the moment just before his death in 1832, Enjolras expresses no desire to understand Grantaire. Even during the Barrière du Maine sequence, when he heard and listened for the first time, he still never tried to understand why Grantaire had suddenly expressed a desire to help.

And with this one horrible, damning sentence, Enjolras tells us soundly that not only does he find Grantaire incomprehensible, he doesn’t think him worth the effort of trying to comprehend.

These men are opposites. Contrary to Hugo’s introduction of them, they do need each other, Enjolras just as much as Grantaire. Those ashes must be fanned into a glow. This is very important.

But Enjolras doesn’t even try.

> _Grantaire replied in a grave tone: –_
> 
> _“You will see.”_

AND YOU WILL!! YOU WILL!!!!! BUT ENJOLRAS DOESN’T BELIEVE HIM!!!!!!

**Enjolras, the believer, does not believe anything of Grantaire.**

> _He stammered a few more unintelligible words, then his head fell heavily on the table, and, as is the usual effect of the second period of inebriety, into which Enjolras had roughly and abruptly thrust him, an instant later he had fallen asleep._

Oh  _Jesus Christ_. Why is that. That phrasing. “The second period of inebriety, into which Enjolras had roughly and abruptly thrust him”. The …. the fuckening ….. sexual connotation ………

I can’t handle this.

The chapter ends here. The next mention of Grantaire will be during “Orestes fasting and Pylades drunk.”

The other thing? The other awful thing? The  _worst_  thing, in fact?

This sleep is that Stygian sleep, that sleep of the dead.

The next time Grantaire wakes, everyone on this barricade will be dead except for Enjolras.

Courfeyrac, who took him to the Ball at Sceaux with Marius and Bossuet. Dead.

Bossuet, who calmed him down from his unhappy rants and expressed concern at his well-being. Dead.

Joly, who drank and teased and punned with him. Dead.

Bahorel, who strolled along the city with him and gave fashion and relationship advice. Dead, and the first to die, at that.

Jehan Prouvaire, who knew just as much of the classics as he does. Dead.

Combeferre, who had just as much scathing wit and just as comprehensive an encyclopedic memory. Dead.

Feuilly, who was another fellow artist, if not by trade then by spirit. Dead.

The only person still alive will be Enjolras, whom he loves. Enjolras, who stands before the firing squad, about to join the rest of them.

And we the readers, and Enjolras as well, will be able to see just how much Grantaire is capable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, and of dying.


	6. orestes fasting and pylades drunk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> finale.

And so we’ve come to the end.

Basing our analysis off Hapgood as always; and since it’s so short, we’re doing the whole chapter, found [here](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.online-literature.com%2Fvictor_hugo%2Fles_miserables%2F321%2F&t=NDEwYWJhN2Y2ODc2YmZiZDUxMmE0ZmU5NGEwNzhjODkzYTMzZTc5NyxHWFp3MURpNQ%3D%3D&b=t%3A-xgIwv6rQKKJyyQisSqL5Q&p=http%3A%2F%2Fparticolored-arts.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F181111742430%2Fgrantaire-is-in-love-with-enjolras-and-enjolras-is&m=0).

> _At length, by dint of mounting on each other’s backs, aiding themselves with the skeleton of the staircase, climbing up the walls, clinging to the ceiling, slashing away at the very brink of the trap-door, the last one who offered resistance, a score of assailants, soldiers, National Guardsmen, municipal guardsmen, in utter confusion, the majority disfigured by wounds in the face during that redoubtable ascent, blinded by blood, furious, rendered savage, made an irruption into the apartment on the first floor. There they found only one man still on his feet, Enjolras._

I’m going to try to distract myself for a second and delay the inevitable by pointing out an interesting translation. The phrase “in utter confusion” in Hapgood’s translation, is originally “pêle-mêle” in French.

It’s pretty much the Frenchified version of pell-mell. Helter-skelter. It’s an informal term that, for me at least, makes me think of being a child, running down a hill and slipping about halfway, and then tumbling down to the end, bruised and battered and out of breath but still intact.

Hugo used this term in the chapter prior, “Foot to Foot,” which can also be translated as “inch by inch,” in which the National Guard and soldiers finally break into the Corinthe itself. It’s a really jarring word, standing out in the middle of the slaughter, like a relic of happier times in the middle of an apocalypse.

It feels like maybe the word Enjolras’ mind scrambles to use to describe what he sees. The battle before this was something he could understand; his friends were still alive; they still had hope. But this is beyond chaos. Maybe pell-mell is the only way to describe it.

Especially when the chapter just before that one, “The Heroes,” is the one where all his friends whom he loved have perished before his eyes.

Enjolras alone is bruised and battered and out of breath but still intact.

> _Without cartridges, without sword, he had nothing in his hand now but the barrel of his gun whose stock he had broken over the head of those who were entering. He had placed the billiard table between his assailants and himself; he had retreated into the corner of the room, and there, with haughty eye, and head borne high, with this stump of a weapon in his hand, he was still so alarming as to speedily create an empty space around him._

My ferocious golden son. Here he is reminding me of the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley.

_In the fell clutch of circumstance_  
_I have not winced nor cried aloud._  
_Under the bludgeonings of chance  
_ _My head is bloody, but unbowed._

_Beyond this place of wrath and tears_  
_Looms but the Horror of the shade,_  
_And yet the menace of the years  
_ _Finds and shall find me unafraid._

He has only a stump of a pistol in his hand. No ammunition. No blade. Nothing but the broken barrel of a carbine and his own two hands, and his dignity. Yet these men somehow are still afraid of him.

With good reason. After all the brutality of the last two chapters alone, never mind everything that happened beforehand, Enjolras is still standing, still unblemished by the fight. It seems like nothing on earth can break him.

(At least externally.)

> _A cry arose:_
> 
> _“He is the leader! It was he who slew the artillery-man. It is well that he has placed himself there. Let him remain there. Let us shoot him down on the spot.”_
> 
> _“Shoot me,” said Enjolras._
> 
> _And flinging away his bit of gun-barrel, and folding his arms, he offered his breast._

“Shoot me,” he says. And he throws away his last weapon, and folds his arms, and stands there waiting for the end.

He has broken, even if he doesn’t look like it. He knows – he  _has_  to know – that the events of June fifth and sixth will be etched in history the same way that the Three Glorious Days in 1830 were, at best.

Fire and smoke in the air, blood in the streets. Young men die, and nothing much changes.

(It will change. It will. But oh, golden boy, that’s decades in the future, and the twentieth century will not be happy. I don’t know that any century on this flawed earth will ever be happy.)

(It’s been over 150 years since its publication, and this book is still needed.)

Enjolras, the angel, has had his wings violently ripped from him, and now he has crashed to the earth. 

> _The audacity of a fine death always affects men. As soon as Enjolras folded his arms and accepted his end, the din of strife ceased in the room, and this chaos suddenly stilled into a sort of sepulchral solemnity. The menacing majesty of Enjolras disarmed and motionless, appeared to oppress this tumult, and this young man, haughty, bloody, and charming, who alone had not a wound, who was as indifferent as an invulnerable being, seemed, by the authority of his tranquil glance, to constrain this sinister rabble to kill him respectfully. His beauty, at that moment augmented by his pride, was resplendent, and he was fresh and rosy after the fearful four and twenty hours which had just elapsed, as though he could no more be fatigued than wounded. It was of him, possibly, that a witness spoke afterwards, before the council of war: “There was an insurgent whom I heard called Apollo.” A National Guardsman who had taken aim at Enjolras, lowered his gun, saying: “It seems to me that I am about to shoot a flower.”_

Apollo?

No.

Enjolras is Icarus.

> _Twelve men formed into a squad in the corner opposite Enjolras, and silently made ready their guns._
> 
> _Then a sergeant shouted:_
> 
> _“Take aim!”_
> 
> _An officer intervened._
> 
> _“Wait.”_
> 
> _And addressing Enjolras:_
> 
> _“Do you wish to have your eyes bandaged?”_
> 
> _“No.”_
> 
> _“Was it you who killed the artillery sergeant?”_
> 
> _“Yes.”_

No blindfold. He faces his death with his eyes open.

I’m so sad. It’s a tired, gentle, proud sort of sad. But I’m so sad for my golden boy.

He is only twenty-six years old. I’m younger than him as I write this, but only by a year and a handful of months. And I’m sure that once I turn twenty-seven – twenty-eight – twenty nine, and so on every year for the rest of my life, I’ll just be sadder.

Look at this. He has an entire life ahead of him, or he did. If he did survive the barricade now through some miracle, what would be left for him? All the rest of his friends have died. And should he fight in 1848, they will succeed, but the aftermath will be even messier – and it’ll fall apart before his eyes.

I draw attention back to “A Group which barely missed becoming historic,” or rather, the wording there.

Before he has even begun to introduce us to these bright young men, Hugo has told us that they are going to die, and die in obscurity.

The Friends of the ABC are not the main characters of  _Les Misérables_. But their trajectory follows that of  _Romeo and Juliet_ , at least in terms of narrative construction.

Here are these bright young souls. They are doomed to die, because the world around them is unjust and unkind. Now: watch how they live, and watch how they die, and mourn, and learn.

> _Grantaire had waked up a few moments before._
> 
> _Grantaire, it will be remembered, had been asleep ever since the preceding evening in the upper room of the wine-shop, seated on a chair and leaning on the table._
> 
> _He realized in its fullest sense the old metaphor of “dead drunk.” The hideous potion of absinthe-porter and alcohol had thrown him into a lethargy. His table being small, and not suitable for the barricade, he had been left in possession of it._

Oh no. Oh God.

I’ve been trying to wrap myself in coherent pedantry, but … I can’t. Not anymore.

This whole time – this entire friggin’ time – Grantaire has been seated at his small table by the open window. And someone, or multiple someones, during the construction of the barricade thought two things: that table is too small to use, and, let him sleep.

Also, Hugo pointedly using the term “dead drunk” is just a personal fuck you, to me, from across 150 years in the time-space continuum. Yeah, I see you, buddy. And I am gonna knock your teeth out. Just you wait.

> _He was still in the same posture, with his breast bent over the table, his head lying flat on his arms, surrounded by glasses, beer-jugs and bottles. His was the overwhelming slumber of the torpid bear and the satiated leech. Nothing had had any effect upon it, neither the fusillade, nor the cannon-balls, nor the grape-shot which had made its way through the window into the room where he was. Nor the tremendous uproar of the assault. He merely replied to the cannonade, now and then, by a snore._

NO. NOOO. NOOOOOOOO.

Mabeuf’s awe-inspiring, terrible death. Nothing. The first firefight in which Bahorel died. Nothing. The end of Jean Prouvaire’s rhyme. Nothing. The flash and bang of Éponine saving Marius’ life and ending her own. Nothing. The report of the rifle which fired over Javert’s head as he walked away, bewildered at not having died when he so thoroughly expected to. Nothing. The last bloody assault where the rest of them died, one after the other, barely a breath between them. Nothing.

Grantaire slept the sleep of Rip van Winkle.

> _He seemed to be waiting there for a bullet which should spare him the trouble of waking._

STOP THIS.

> _Many corpses were strewn around him; and, at the first glance, there was nothing to distinguish him from those profound sleepers of death._

I DON’T WANT THIS.

> _Noise does not rouse a drunken man; silence awakens him. The fall of everything around him only augmented Grantaire’s prostration; the crumbling of all things was his lullaby._

GOD, NO,  _STOP_.

> _The sort of halt which the tumult underwent in the presence of Enjolras was a shock to this heavy slumber. It had the effect of a carriage going at full speed, which suddenly comes to a dead stop. The persons dozing within it wake up. Grantaire rose to his feet with a start, stretched out his arms, rubbed his eyes, stared, yawned, and understood._

God, I can’t imagine what he’s thinking right now. Looking around, seeing the utter destruction of this wine shop – which he discovered, which he loved, he’s the one who first introduced his friends to the Corinthe – which was, this time only yesterday, empty except for the goings-on of Matelote and Gibelotte, and the cheerfulness of his friends.

All destroyed.

National Guards, soldiers, twelve total in the company, wounded, bloodied, savage, armed.

And Enjolras, unarmed, his arms folded across his chest, severe dignity on his beautiful face.

Grantaire woke, he stood, he stretched out his arms, he rubbed his eyes, he stared at the wreckage before him, he yawned, and he knew that the rebels had lost.

> _A fit of drunkenness reaching its end resembles a curtain which is torn away. One beholds, at a single glance and as a whole, all that it has concealed. All suddenly presents itself to the memory; and the drunkard who has known nothing of what has been taking place during the last twenty-four hours, has no sooner opened his eyes than he is perfectly informed. Ideas recur to him with abrupt lucidity; the obliteration of intoxication, a sort of steam which has obscured the brain, is dissipated, and makes way for the clear and sharply outlined importunity of realities._

STOP. NOOO.

I’M SO SAD.

WE HAVE GONE BEYOND MOM-FRIEND-SAD. WE ARE RAPIDLY REACHING ANGRY-SAD. YELLING-AT-THE-COMPUTER SAD.

( “You know, the Titanic sinks at the end.” SHUT UP. SHUT UP!!! I’M HAVING EMOTIONS!!! )

> _Relegated, as he was, to one corner, and sheltered behind the billiard-table, the soldiers whose eyes were fixed on Enjolras, had not even noticed Grantaire, and the sergeant was preparing to repeat his order: “Take aim!” when all at once, they heard a strong voice shout beside them:_
> 
> _“Long live the Republic! I’m one of them.”_

NOOOOOOOOOO. OH, MY DARLING BOY, NOOOOOOOOO !!!!!!!!!!

He is behind the same billiard table that Enjolras is currently standing near, but I suppose on the opposite side of it. Take that with all the symbolism you like. Oh, man.

But – look – “ _I am one of them_.”

Zip back to “Night begins to descend upon Grantaire” for a hot second. During his blather while harassing Matelote, Grantaire says “Comrades,  _we_  shall overthrow the government,” and despite his awful retort to Courfeyrac’s attempt to get him to be quiet, he genuinely seems fired up. Maybe he would have helped with the barricade. Maybe if someone had woken him earlier, he could have helped. (Or he could have died in the last assault like the rest of them.)

But it wasn’t until Enjolras told him to go sleep off his drunkenness that Grantaire even started to entertain the idea of sleeping rather than participating in the émeute. And then it was only when Enjolras harshly batted him down the second time, that Grantaire actually did fall asleep.

Now. Would a drunk-off-his-gourd Grantaire have been useful on the barricade? No. Definitely not. But even after a five hour binge, it was two o’clock when the barricade started to be built. The death of Mabeuf didn’t come until after night had actually fallen, and that would have been a whole five hours after the barricade’s construction. Before the first assault came, someone could have woken him.

And he might just have helped. Because as we have seen over and over and over, from his very first appearance, Grantaire may not believe in causes but he does believe in his friends. And he loves his friends. I have no difficulty in hypothesizing that he would have more than willingly died for his friends.

> _Grantaire had risen. The immense gleam of the whole combat which he had missed, and in which he had had no part, appeared in the brilliant glance of the transfigured drunken man._

TRANSFIGURED. JUST. JAB ME IN THE EYE WITH A SHARPENED STICK. THAT WOULD HURT LESS.

From “The Solution of some Questions connected with the Municipal Police” :

(Clio are you seriously gonna –? YES I AM, WATCH ME, AND ONCE AGAIN, IT WILL MAKE PERFECT SENSE.)

> _She spoke thus, rent in twain, shaken with sobs, blinded with tears, her neck bare, wringing her hands, and coughing with a dry, short cough, stammering softly with a voice of agony. **Great sorrow is a divine and terrible ray, which transfigures the unhappy.**  At that moment Fantine had become beautiful once more._

Emphasis mine.

H o oo o ooo ly God.

His friends are dead, and his beacon of light and faith is about to die. The wretched misery that seized Fantine when she thought Cosette would die is the exact same wretched misery that seizes Grantaire now.

Back to “Orestes fasting and Pylades drunk.”

> _He repeated: “Long live the Republic!” crossed the room with a firm stride and placed himself in front of the guns beside Enjolras._
> 
> _“Finish both of us at one blow,” said he._

NoooOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If Cosette dies: Fantine has nothing to live for.

If his friends die: Grantaire has nothing to live for.

I’m so upset.

> _And turning gently to Enjolras, he said to him:_
> 
> _“Do you permit it?”_
> 
> _Enjolras pressed his hand with a smile._
> 
> _This smile was not ended when the report resounded._

“Et, se tournant vers Enjolras avec douceur, il lui dit : – Permets-tu?”

_Douceur_  again. Gentleness, softness, sweetness.

Grantaire isn’t described as physically reaching out to Enjolras, but in spirit that is exactly what he is doing. Just as he did when volunteering for the Barrière du Maine, though he failed in that attempt. Only this time, there is nothing left to do; there is nowhere for them to go. How can he fail in death?

“Enjolras lui serra la main en souriant.”

_Serrer la main_  means to shake hands. But in every other context,  _serrer_  is to to squeeze, to clamp, to tighten. To hold tightly and not let go.

After the Barrière du Maine, Enjolras did not ever again try reaching out to Grantaire; he did not consider him worthy of a second chance. He stood at a height, and saw the abyss, and turned away.

Now he has been brought crashing down to earth in the worst possible way. And this time, when Grantaire reaches up for him, he takes his hand.

After over four years of approach and harsh rebuttal – after over four years of  _he is high above me_  and  _what on earth is he doing here_  – they have just begun to understand each other.

Maybe they even have something in common. Maybe, together, they can learn that opposite doesn’t mean enemy. Maybe, together, they can learn that skepticism and idealism can balance each other out.

But the only way that they can come to this meeting, that they begin to understand their equality – the only way that they can even become  _friends_ , let alone more than that – is the circumstance in which they die.

And before Enjolras can even finish his smile, they are dead.

**Their beginning is, and can only be, their ending.**

> _Enjolras, pierced by eight bullets, remained leaning against the wall, as though the balls had nailed him there. Only, his head was bowed._
> 
> _Grantaire fell at his feet, as though struck by a thunderbolt._

OH FUCK THIS AND FUCK YOU PERSONALLY.

^ That was my initial reaction to this bit, and I am sticking with it.

Because even in death, even though not a second earlier they had just come to the inklings of an understanding, Grantaire is below Enjolras.

Oh, sure, they’re both martyrs of the revolution. But Enjolras is St Sebastian, pierced with bullets and still radiant and desperately beautiful; Grantaire is an unrealized St Paul.

… HA. You know, I made that comparison off the top of my head, but at least regarding Grantaire it does work on a literary level.

Paul and Peter died at Nero’s hands. And Lactantius writes that Nero “crucified Peter, and slew Paul”.

They both die by firing squad, but Enjolras is still elevated,  _still standing upright_ for cripes’ sake, and Grantaire is literally at his feet.

And the creme de la creme à la Edgar, the reason I started this whole damn series:

Grantaire dies by a lightning bolt.

A sudden realization of love.

Enjolras begins to smile, and Grantaire begins to realize his love, and they die. And that is the inevitable conclusion: death.

And I SCREAM BLUE BLOODY MURDER.

> _A few moments later, the soldiers dislodged the last remaining insurgents, who had taken refuge at the top of the house. They fired into the attic through a wooden lattice. They fought under the very roof. They flung bodies, some of them still alive, out through the windows._

This is where Enjo’s defenestration in LM 2012 comes from! Neat!

By which I mean, NOT NEAT AT ALL.

> _Two light-infantrymen, who tried to lift the shattered omnibus, were slain by two shots fired from the attic. A man in a blouse was flung down from it, with a bayonet wound in the abdomen, and breathed his last on the ground. A soldier and an insurgent slipped together on the sloping slates of the roof, and, as they would not release each other, they fell, clasped in a ferocious embrace. A similar conflict went on in the cellar. Shouts, shots, a fierce trampling. Then silence. The barricade was captured._
> 
> _The soldiers began to search the houses round about, and to pursue the fugitives._

… And curtain.

Orestes’ revenge rebounds upon him; he dies, and Pylades exits the play, accepted at last.


End file.
